NATO bombings in Serbia anniversary accompanied by war criminals' deninforms and messages

“> The Merciful Angel made Serbia level with land”, “We protected our homeland and amazed the world”.

These titles, as well as the messages of convicted war criminals, accompany the reports of daily newspapers and pictures in Serbia to the 27th anniversary of the start of NATO bombings on Serbian military and police targets in the former Yugoslavia.

The bombings began on 24 March 1999 and lasted 78 days aimed at preventing crimes of Serbian police and military units against Albanian civilians in Kosovo, who have testified with the International Court's rulings in The Hague.

Reports of crimes and deportation of the Albanian population preceding the bombings are not mentioned in the power-related media in Serbia, and they are also lacking in statements by Serbian officials.

Even though the state has never compiled any official list of the victims of NATO bombings, power speaks of <x0 thousand killed”.

According to the victims' names registry, published in 2014 by nongovernmental funds for humanitarian rights (FHP) in Serbia and Kosovo, 450 civilians and 305 members of the armed forces lost their lives in NATO attacks.

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The interpretation of the events that preceded 27 years on the pages of several media in Serbia provides war crimes convicts at The Hague.

“This is memory and memory misuse aimed at denying Albanian victims”, Free Europe (REL) Radio tells Marko Milosavljevic from the nongovernmental organisation Youth Initiative for Human Rights.

Interview for the daily Politika newspaper, on the occasion of the anniversary of the bombing, gave Vladimir Lazarevic, assessing NATO intervention as the unprecedented “ ”.

Lazarevic is a former Yugoslav Army general who for crimes against Albanian civilians in Kosovo in 1999 was sentenced to 14 years in prison at The Hague.

The Tribunal found it guilty in 2009 of command responsibility for aid and support of crimes against humanity, including the deportation and forced displacement of Albanian civilians from Kosovo.

After the penalty, he returned to Serbia in 2015, by government aircraft and was received by the ministers. Later he won a job as a legalist at the Military Academy, and then the honorary citizen title of a municipality in southern Serbia.

Media space for the 1999 interpretation of events was also given to Nikola Shainovich, former vice president of the Yugoslav Government and sentenced by The Hague.

Shainovaqi in The Hague was sentenced to 18 years in prison for forced relocation, deportation, murder and persecution of the Albanian population from Kosovo in the first half of 1999.

Promoting convicted war criminals is in line with state policy in Serbia.

For years, power and media around him call them “heronj”, while Serbia's Justice Minister Nenad Vujic said in 2025 that the state should show it stands behind all those sentenced in The Hague.

Some media for NATO military intervention use the term “Angel Merciful”, although the official name of the operation was “Operation Allied Forces”.

What preceded the bombing?

The REL asked Belgrade citizens what was the cause of the bombing, according to them.

Petar stresses that the real reason was “that Serbia should not be strong in the region”.

Milka told the RE that the bombings started “for no reason”.

The aim was only to destroy the country and introduce foreign troops”, she claimed.

Radoslav says it's possible that then “something that didn't have to be”, but that “reaction was not appropriate”.

Marko Milosavlevq of the Youth Initiative for Human Rights stresses that their research shows that about 80 per cent of young people in Serbia do not know about war crimes where perpetrators (members of the Serbian Armed Forces) are located.

This applies especially to the war in Kosovo and in Bosnia and Herzegovina (in the 1990s)”, he says.

NATO bombings in 1999 preceded the Kosovo war (19981999), in which an estimated 13,000 people, mostly Albanians, were killed, while thousands of others disappeared.

Secretary - General NATO at the time, Javier Solana, authorised the air strikes following the international community's failed attempts to convince former Serbian Freedom Slobodan Milosevic of the ceasefire.

Facts About the Victims

In the bombings, 261 people lost their lives on Serbia's territory -- 10 in Montenegro and 484 in Kosovo -- show the Fund's data on Humanitarian Law.

Among the civilian victims were mostly persons of Albanian affiliation: 217.

Also, 205 civilians of Serbian and Montenegrin affiliation, 14 Roma and 14 civilians of other members were killed.

Military objects in Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo were destroyed during the air campaign, as well as command and control systems, antiaircraft protection, energy infrastructure and communication systems, and others.

The Serbian military and police after the NATO bombings withdrew from Kosovo, which in 2008 declared independence. Belgrade does not recognize him to this day.

NATO bombing anniversary officials of Serbia marked it with commemorative events.

Their statements, as well as previous years, are accompanied by data on <x0 thousand civilian victims” of the bombing.

The most mentioned number, mentioned also by Serbia's president, Aleksandar Vuciq, is that 2,500 people have been killed, “not only civilians, but also soldiers and police”.

However, he has not shown on which sources he relies.

Research by the Youth Initiative for Human Rights has shown that more than 90 percent of young people believe that thousands of people have been killed during the bombing.

“What is missing in state commemorations is exactly the facts and data”, Milosavlevic points out, and adds that Albanian victims are not mentioned.

Dezinforms from Russia

On the occasion of the anniversary of the NATO bombings, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs was also approved, saying the bombings were <x0-traditions, the long-term and multiple consequences of which still feel”.

The ministry announced in Telegram that “NATO used ammunition with impoverished uranium”, which “increased unprecedented in the number of different types of cancer”.

There is no evidence that the use of impoverished uranium ammunition has led to increasing the number of cancer cases in the region.

In May 2018, Serbia's Assembly founded a Commission on investigating the consequences of NATO bombings on citizens' health and environment, but their report has not been published until now.

Serbia's officials cultivate close ties with Russia, while in recent years, a series of cultural exhibitions and events under the auspices of the Russian House in Belgrade, which is funded by Russia, have been organised on the eve of the anniversary of NATO bombings.

Russia in 2024 on two occasions demanded that the UN Security Council discuss NATO bombings, but those proposals were not approved. / REL