In the News March 23

Ukraine-Related News

Serbia Will Not Join NATO President Says

Memorial to the children killed by NATO’s aggression against Yugoslavia, Tasmajdan Park, Belgrade, Serbia.

Recalling all the children killed in the former Yugoslavia during the 78-day U.S./NATO bombing campaign in 1999, code-named Alliance Force, Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic said his country will not join NATO. Serbia cannot forget the children killed he told an election rally in Kikinda on March 21.

“I believe that Serbia must not join NATO. Serbia is a free country and a militarily neutral country. Serbia will be defending its land and its sky on its own. But let me tell you something: our duty is to forgive and our duty is not to forget. Not to forget 11-month-old Bojana Tosic, killed in Merdare, near Kursumlija, not to forget little Milica Rakic, killed in Batajnica, and not to forget little Sanja Milenkovic, killed in Varvarin. We have no right to forget this. We will get far more stronger than we were in those days, when the irresponsible, the arrogant and the presumptuous were bombing us and waging a war of aggression against us and our country,” Vucic said.

The argument used to justify the destruction of Yugoslavia was prevention of genocide of Kosovo’s Albanians. According to NATO’s sources its aircraft flew 38,000 sorties and carried out 10,000 bombing strikes.

The bombardments killed, according to different estimates, 3,500-4,000 people, and left about 10,000 others (two-thirds of them civilians) injured. The material damage totaled $100 billion. During the three months of bombardments NATO forces dropped on Serbia 15 tonnes of depleted uranium in bombs and shells. After that, the country’s cancer rates surged to first place in Europe. In the first ten years following the bombardments about 30,000 people developed cancer and an estimated 10,000-18,000 of them died.

(TML Daily, posted March 23, 2022)