On this day, 26 years ago, the NATO aggression against FR Yugoslavia was launched

According to the data of the Ministry of Defense of Serbia, during the 78 days of aggression, 1,031 members of the Army and the police were killed, and around 2,500 civilians, including 89 children, were killed. About 6,000 civilians were wounded, of which 2,700 were children, as well as 5,173 soldiers and policemen, and 25 people went missing.

As it was presented to the world public, the reason for the aggression was the situation in Kosovo and Metohija, i.e. the severe humanitarian crisis in that area, and the order for the attack was given by Javier Solana, then Secretary General of NATO, to US General Wesley Clark.

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The events in Racak on January 15, and then the failure of the alleged negotiations conducted in Rambouillet and Paris, were used as an excuse for NATO aggression.

After the Serbian Parliament confirmed that it does not accept the decision on foreign troops on its territory, along with the proposal that the United Nations monitor the peace settlement in Kosovo and Metohija, NATO began airstrikes.

In reality, a series of terrorist acts committed by the so-called KLA took place in Kosovo and Metohija, both against the security forces of Serbia and the FRY, the highest police force, and against numerous civilians, not only Serbs but also Albanians, infrastructure facilities, Serbian sacred churches as well.

According to the first announcement of the General Staff of the Yugoslav Army, on March 24 at around 8:45 p.m., more than 20 objects were targeted in the first raid.

The first missiles fell on the barracks in Prokuplje at 19:53. This was followed by an attack on Priština, Kuršumlija, Batajnica, and Straževica. NATO began bombing from ships in the Adriatic, as well as from four air bases in Italy.

During the 11 weeks of aggression, there is almost no city in Serbia that was not targeted. NATO carried out 2,300 strikes and dropped 22,000 tons of missiles, including 37,000 banned cluster bombs and those filled with enriched uranium.

According to the findings of the relevant services of Serbia, 18,168 air flights were recorded until June 10, 1999. According to NATO sources, there were 38,004 sorties, of which 10,484 were fire operations, while the rest were reconnaissance, air raids and the like. At first, around 70 combat aircraft participated in the operations daily, and later that number would be around 400 daily.

In addition to attacks from ships in the Adriatic, as well as from four air bases in Italy, operations were carried out from bases in Western European countries and from the USA.

A large part of the country's infrastructure, economic facilities, schools, health facilities, media houses, cultural monuments, churches and monasteries were destroyed. All together, it is estimated, about 50 percent of Serbia's production capacity.

About 25,000 residential buildings were destroyed or damaged, 470 kilometers of roads and 595 kilometers of railways were disabled.

14 airports, 19 hospitals, 20 health centers, 18 kindergartens, 69 schools, 176 cultural monuments and 44 bridges were damaged, while 38 were destroyed.

A third of the country's power capacity was destroyed. Refineries in Pančevo and Novi Sad were bombed, which had incalculable environmental consequences. NATO used, allegedly for the first time, so-called graphite bombs to disable the power system.

The Chinese embassy in Belgrade was destroyed on May 7, 1999.

The RTS building in Belgrade was destroyed on April 23. 16 people died and the same number were wounded. The Novi Sad Television building was destroyed on May 3, 1999, on the International Media Freedom Day.

Various data were presented about the material damage caused during the NATO aggression. The then authorities in Belgrade estimated the damage at approximately one hundred billion dollars, and the group of G17 economists estimated the damage at 29.6 billion dollars at the time.

NATO denied that it had suffered any losses, and there were claims from Belgrade that dozens of aircraft had been shot down. The Russian news agency APN announced that NATO lost more than 400 soldiers and over 60 aircrafts, while US President Bill Clinton stated in a speech on June 10, 1999 that NATO had no casualties.

The remains of downed F-117, F-16, unmanned aerial vehicles, and cruise missiles are preserved in the Aviation Museum in Belgrade. The F 117 aircraft, the so-called "invisible" previously symbol of the superiority of American technology, ended up in a field in the atar of the village of Budjanovci in Srem.

Military aggression against Serbia, allegedly due to the situation in Kosovo and Metohija, was threatened almost a decade earlier, actually from the very beginning of the crisis in the territory of the former Yugoslavia, and was actively prepared during 1998.

In the book "Modern Warfare", Wesley Clark did not hide that, as he put it, the planning of the NATO aggression against the FRY "was well under way in mid-June 1998".

The decision to adopt the order for the activation of forces was made by the NATO Council on October 12, 1998.

The next day, Slobodan Milosevic signs an agreement with Richard Holbrooke. It is planned to reduce the number of members of the Yugoslav Army in the area of ​​Kosovo and Metohija to the number from the beginning of 1998. It has also been agreed that OSCE observers will monitor the peace process in Kosovo and Metohija. At the same time, it was determined that no one can be held responsible for criminal acts related to the events in Kosovo and Metohija.

Regardless of the agreement, after the meeting of the NATO Council on January 30, 1999, it was officially announced that NATO was ready to launch strikes against the FRY.

The aggression itself was preceded by the additional deployment of NATO troops in Albania and Macedonia.

Then the so-called negotiations were staged in Rambouillet and Paris from February 6 to March 19, 1999. The FRY delegation did not sign the final text offered.

This was followed by another theatrical arrival of Richard Holbrooke in Belgrade on March 22 to talk with Slobodan Milošević, as a manifestation of alleged good intentions for the international public.

Madeleine Albright herself, the main architect of the military aggression against Serbia, did not hide that the level of demands sent to Belgrade grew all the time, to a level that was impossible to accept.

According to Vladislav Jovanović, announcements of bombings have been around for ten years, since the time when Bob Dole promised independence in Pristina.

Bill Clinton, then President of the USA, told the delegation of American Serbs that he himself would not sign what was demanded of Milosevic. Henry Kissinger expressed himself similarly.

Without a doubt, the aggression of 19 NATO members on Serbia, i.e. the FRY, took place with the aim of seizing Kosovo and Metohija from Serbia, and it was air support for the terrorist KLA, which by then had already committed countless crimes.

Bill Clinton, then president of the USA, spoke the same evening about the need to "intimidate Serbia and Yugoslavia" and "destroy Serbia's military capacities", so that, as he said, "actions against the Kosovo Albanians would not be taken".

Tony Blair, Prime Minister of Britain, stated that the NATO aggression was undertaken because it was requested by the "people of Kosovo", by which, as he openly stated, he meant the Albanians.

EPA PHOTO EPA/SASA STANKOVIC/as/vk-cl

On May 27, 1999, in the wake of the aggression against the FRY, the International Criminal Court for the former Yugoslavia published an indictment and issued arrest warrants for Slobodan Milošević, Milan Milutinović, Nikola Šainović, Dragoljub Ojdanić and Vlajko Stojiljković for alleged crimes in Kosovo.

The suspension of NATO aggression came after the signing of the Military-Technical Agreement near Kumanovo on June 9, 1999.

This was preceded by visits to Belgrade by Martti Ahtisaari and Viktor Chernomyrdin in order to put additional pressure on Milosevic. The German chancellor at the time, Gerhard Schroeder, credits the diplomatic successes of Joška Fischer, the then German foreign minister, in his memoirs for the integration of Russia into the policy of the US and NATO regarding Kosovo. At the time, the US and Britain were openly considering a NATO ground invasion of Serbia.

Victor Chernomyrdin, Martti Ahtisaari and Strobe Talbott met in Bonn at the very beginning of June to prepare for the performance at Milošević's. According to Ahtisaari, NATO then set the deadline for solving the crisis until the G8 meeting in Cologne on June 7 and 8. Otherwise, a land invasion would follow. They agreed on June 2, in the form of a 10-point agreement, based on which Martti Ahtisaari and Viktor Chernomyrdin left for Belgrade on June 3.

Viktor Chernomyrdin acted particularly harshly in Belgrade at that time, presenting the proposed proposal to Milosevic as an ultimatum. Boris Yeltsin, the then president of Russia, then interpreted that Chernomyrdin "did everything he could" and that he "stopped the war" with the assessment that "Milošević behaved absolutely unprincipled" and that, according to Yeltsin, this "pushed Russia into a military and political confrontation with the West".

Three days after the signing of the Military-Technical Agreement near Kumanovo on June 9, 1999, the withdrawal of Serbian and FRY forces from Kosovo and Metohija began. The agreement stipulated the establishment of the United Nations mission, UNMIK.

On June 10, 1999, Javier Solana, then Secretary General of NATO, issued an order to stop the bombing.

The last missiles fell on June 10 in the area of ​​the village of Kololeč, near Kosovska Kamenica, at 1:30 p.m., and on the barracks in Uroševac around 7:35 p.m. It was the 79th day of the NATO aggression against Serbia, that is, the FRY.

The UN Security Council then adopted Resolution 1244. As part of the KFOR mission, 37,200 soldiers were sent to Kosovo and Metohija.

The highlight of the entire process was the unilateral declaration of Kosovo's independence on February 17, 2008, which was recognized by the countries that participated in the aggression against Serbia in 1999.