Journalist Gojgic: Serbs remember NATO bombing and sanctions, so they support Russia
Most Serbs are against the Western sanctions against Russia, as they themselves lived under the conditions of restrictive measures in the nineties, journalist Ljubica Gojgic told the Financial Times.
According to the paper’s columnist Paula Erizanu, 80 per cent of Serbia’s residents hold similar views.
“The victims of the economic collapse were not only the family of Slobodan Milosevic (former president – Ed.), but also my own family,” Gojgic explained.
According to her, the Serbs also remember the bombing of Belgrade. For her part, Erizanu reminded that Moscow had opposed NATO’s aggression against Yugoslavia.
“Rockets were falling in my neighbourhood, although there were no military targets there – only a water company. Bombs were flying right over my head,” she told the newspaper.
In 1999, an armed confrontation between Albanian separatists from the Kosovo Liberation Army and the Serbian army and police led to NATO bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY), which at the time consisted of Serbia and Montenegro.
The military operation began without UN Security Council approval. The pretext for the operation was the Western countries’ allegation that the FRY authorities had carried out ethnic cleansing in the Kosovo Autonomous Republic and provoked a humanitarian catastrophe there. The NATO airstrikes continued from 24 March to 10 June 1999, killing more than 2,500 people, including 87 children, and causing damage worth 100 billion dollars.
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