27 years from Kosovo liberation

On June 12th 1999, after 78 days of bombing of the US-led Western Military Alliance against Serb-Montenegrin military targets in Kosovo in Serbia and Montenegro, NATO troops entered Kosovo in the peacekeeping mission that would be called KFOR, ending the nearly two-year war between the Albanian rebel population organised in the ranks of the Kosovo Liberation Army and the Serbian-Montenegrin occupational forces and police.

Appreciated by those who experienced it as a day of liberation and as one of the greatest days in Kosovo's history, June 12th, though not known as an official holiday, is a day when by international military and diplomats will be remembered as a day of ready-to-reach confrontation between the West and Russia, a day as it was said, “that could start World War III”

The first NATO soldiers to enter Kosovo on 12 June were Norway's special forces and those of the British Special Air Service, finding face-to-face with Russia's troops who the previous day had allegedly taken over Pristina Airport for the purpose of partitioning Kosovo.

Following the American-British blockade of the airport runway, the Russian Foreign Ministry called the intervention of its soldiers “a mistake”.

And everything else is history. NATO's entry returned to Kosovo more than one million Albanians.

The entry of NATO soldiers paved the way for return to homes, land and their country to over one million dedisposed Kosovo Albanians in dozens of countries and three to four continents of the world.

So far, nearly 500,000 members of the peacekeeping forces of many countries, mainly Western ones, have served in Kosovo, being away from families and their most loved ones and sacrificing part of their lives for freedom, security and peace in Kosovo.