NATO BOMBING A PRECEDENT THAT GAVE THE WEST A FALSE SENSE OF IMPUNITY

EAST SARAJEVO, SEPTEMBER 7 /SRNA/ – 1995 NATO bombing of Republika Srpska was a precedent that gave the West a false sense of impunity, marking the beginning of its practice of illegally and violently interfering in the internal affairs of other countries and violating their sovereignty and independence, the Embassy of the Russian Federation in BiH told SRNA.

The Embassy emphasized that NATO’s Operation Deliberate Force, carried out in August and September 1995, was an unjustified act of aggression that resulted in a large number of innocent civilian casualties. The Russian diplomatic mission recalled that it has been reliably confirmed that depleted uranium projectiles were used during the bombing, which caused a drastic increase in cancer cases across BiH - a trend still observed today. "This was done by the West, which now spreads propaganda about so-called ‘malign Russian influence in BiH’," the Embassy pointed out on the occasion of the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of NATO Aggression on Republika Srpska. The Embassy underlined that the NATO bombing exceeded the boundaries of international law, bypassed relevant UN Security Council resolutions, and became the first instance in history where NATO used military force outside its own territory. The first NATO airstrikes targeted Army of Republika Srpska positions in the Sarajevo-Romanija region, with the official justification being the bomb explosion at the Markale market in Sarajevo on August 28, 1995. The Serbs were immediately blamed for the massacre, although then-international officials Yasushi Akashi and General Michael Rose stated that there was no evidence that the shell was fired from Serb positions. Through Deliberate Force, NATO wrote shameful pages of its history, bombing Republika Srpska from August 30 to September 14, 1995. The outcome of the 15-day bombing campaign was 46 killed soldiers, 7 killed civilians, 130 wounded soldiers and civilians The number of victims from contaminated bombs is difficult to determine, even those who called for NATO intervention were not immune to the consequences. The initiative to mark the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of NATO Bombing was launched in Andrićgrad on August 26, 2018, at the proposal of the News Agency of Republika Srpska /SRNA/.