Oh, what a country it was! As boys, we knew her by the brightest and most highly valued stamps among philatelists. Studying history, watching feature films, we admired its heroic people, who fought together with us shoulder to shoulder against the Nazis, admired its leader, a handsome marshal in an invariable white uniform. When they grew up, they dreamed of visiting it, because, although she was also socialist, she lived widely, beautifully and cheerfully. They chased through Moscow stores and stood in lines for the goods she produced. Furniture, shoes, various chic clothes ... And what films about Indians! Girls - so they fell in love with her artists and athletes. In short, not a country, but a dream. Everyone is envy. And the name is beautiful and proud: Yugoslavia. Before our eyes, she was gone. As, however, and our socialist homeland.
The story of the death of Yugoslavia, which at first was divided into six independent states, and then mired in the blood of civil war and, having undergone "peacekeeping" NATO bombing, was never able to finally recover, is sad and instructive. The factors of its collapse are considered the death of Joseph Broz Tito in 1980, the subsequent long-lasting economic recession, and, most importantly, nationalist strife, which reached an extreme boiling point in 1991. The final bifurcation point was Kosovo. In technology, this term denotes a critical state of the system, in which uncertainty arises: the state of the system will become chaotic or it will move to a new, more differentiated and high level of order. In this case, the second did not happen. This region, inhabited mainly by Albanians, began to seethe even under the communists.Milosevic tried to resolve the contradictions in his own way. It only got worse.
79-year-old Serbian general Ratko Mladic, who during these days, after long ordeals with an appeal, received confirmation of his life sentence in The Hague (and will now slowly die in captivity), was a hero of the 1992-1994 Bosnian war. He made a brilliant career in the Yugoslav People's Army. He considered his main enemies to be the Ustasha, who originated with the Croatian fascist ultra-right nationalist clerical organization founded in 1929 in Italy. Considering themselves a "pure" Croatian nation, they supported Mussolini and Hitler and carried out genocide of Serbs, Jews and Roma. The Ustashi Muslim Slavs (Boshniaks) living in Bosnia and Herzegovina were declared part of the Croatian people. When the campaign for the rehabilitation of the Independent State of Croatia began in the early 1990s, a stream of ideological descendants of the Ustasha rushed from abroad.They became the main driving force behind the next armed interethnic conflict, in which Mladic took an active part on the side of the Serbs.
The military confrontation very quickly became all-encompassing. It was attended by: the armed formations of the Serbs (Army of the Republika Srpska) under the command of Mladic, Muslim autonomists (People's Defense of Western Bosnia), Bosnian Muslims (Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina) and Croats (Croatian Defense Council). Later in the conflict were involved: the Croatian army, volunteers and mercenaries from all sides and the armed forces of NATO. The cauldron of war in the Balkans was about to burst and turn into a world conflagration. How the bombing from the side of the North Atlantic alliance did not lead to this, God only knows. It is known that during these years our country was also torn apart by centrifugal forces. However, the Bosnian scenario was avoided.
Why is the story of the collapse of Yugoslavia so instructive?
The first is that nationalism in its radical form is destructive for any state formation.
Secondly, those who want collapse, strive to achieve this not by washing, but by rolling.
And, as one friend of mine used to say, everything bad must be interrupted in the bud.
Third: there will always be another side of the conflict, which, as it were, with the best of intentions (but in fact, being guided solely by its own selfish interests), will start pouring kerosene into the fire.
What the NATO bombings have done against the former Yugoslavia cannot be compared with what happened during the war itself.
And finally, about what happens afterwards.
In particular, with retribution for those who carried out these bloody deeds.
In a civil war, as a rule, there are no right or wrong.
Everyone defends their beliefs and their idea of justice.
But again, there will always be a force willing to demonstrate that it is she who has the right to decide the fate of the world and individual participants in the events taking place.
As the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova said: "The indictment of Mladic looks hypocritical against the background of the justification by the" Hague justice "of other participants in the conflict of those years, such as the Croatian general Gotovina, the Kosovar Haradinai and the Boshniak field commander Orich.
Russia, which is a permanent member of the UN Security Council, became the only country that openly criticized the tribunal. The majority of the participants in the next meeting of this international organization welcomed the results of the work of the court, as well as the sentence to the former commander of the Bosnian Serb army. “Why are you turning your back on the crimes committed by the Albanians? .. For nearly 30 years, almost a third of a century, the biased costly flywheel of the Hague justice methodically grinds the fates of the participants in the Balkan War, which especially clearly highlighted how easily NATO countries can step over the UN Charter in conditions of impunity and start a military operation in a third country, "said Gennady Kuzmin, Russia's Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN, adding that the tribunal" went down in history as an instrument of reprisal, and not as an organ of justice. "
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic made a speech at the UN Security Council meeting via video link. He pointed out that the International Tribunal in The Hague only handed down the harshest sentences to Serbs, as was done in the case of General Ratko Mladic and the first President of the Republika Srpska Radovan Faradzic. At the same time, Croatian and Muslim defendants received significantly shorter sentences, and then returned home altogether, being fully acquitted after the review of their cases.
Until 2017, justice was administered by the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. The successor to the ICTY after the end of its mandate was the so-called International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IOMUT). It was he who refused Mladic adequate treatment after a stroke and several operations. The court has repeatedly rejected requests for the general to be allowed to undergo a comprehensive examination by Russian and Serbian doctors. At one time, even the President of the Russian Federation personally made such a proposal.
The first victim of the ICTY was the former President of Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic.
He did not hide from the court and on June 28, 2001, he was brought to the tribunal and transferred to the UN prison in The Hague.
The trial began on February 12, 2002.
Due to the deteriorating state of health of the defendant, the process was interrupted 22 times.
On March 11, 2006, Slobodan Milosevic died of a heart attack in the prison of the Hague Tribunal.
On March 14 of the same year, the Slobodan Milosevic case was closed.
It seems that the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals, having failed to condemn the main, in his opinion, the culprit of the tragedy, is now acting in accordance with its name.
By the residual principle.
The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.