On 22nd Anniversary of NATO Bombing of Yugoslavia Russia Issues Warning: It Must Never Be Repeated

Russia has issued a warning against a repeat of the NATO Western military alliance's bombing campaign of Yugoslavia on its 22nd anniversary, as Washington's top diplomat seeks to rally the alliance for the first time under the banner of U.S. President Joe Biden's administration.

"Such evil, as NATO's aggression against Yugoslavia, must never be repeated," Moscow's embassy in Belgrade, then the Yugoslav capital and today the capital of Serbia, said in a statement Wednesday in reference to the 1999 NATO attack on the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

The statement argued that the attack violated "the basic principles of international law established in the UN Charter, the final document from Helsinki and other international documents."

The air campaign was launched in response to accusations that Yugoslav security forces had conducted a campaign of ethnic cleansing against ethnic Albanians in the fight against the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army. Both Russia and China used their permanent United Nations Security Council member privileges to veto international action, arguing a need for peaceful settlement rather than the use of force.

NATO went ahead anyway, with Moscow protesting to this day.

"During the 78 days of barbaric bombing, which was cynically depicted as a 'humanitarian intervention in the name of rescuing refugees,' about two thousand civilians died," the embassy said. "A significant part of the country's infrastructural and industrial capacity has been destroyed. Thousands of civilian buildings have been demolished. The application of ammunition with depleted uranium has led to irreversible infections in a number of regions of land and groundwater."

Included in the collateral damage of the campaign was...