$100bn NATO claim: Serbian NGOs seek compensation for 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia

Published time: March 24, 2015 12:34

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Residents stand on the rubble of houses in town of Cuprija, some 100km (65 miles) south of Yugoslav capital of Belgrade where 11 people were injured, five of them seriously including four women, after nine NATO missiles struck the centre of the town early May 29,1999.(Reuters)

to pay compensation for the massive damage inflicted during the 1999 bombing campaign against Yugoslavia.

A meeting of the Belgrade Forum for the World of Equals and the Club of Generals and Admirals in Belgrade presented an initiative to hold 28-member NATO financially accountable for the damage that Yugoslavia sustained in the attacks.

Serbian experts put the price tag of the devastation between $60 and $100 billion.

Retired General Jovo Milanovic said that NATO's military offensive, which was unsanctioned by the United Nations, represented "a violation of all norms of international law that caused enormous material damage to Yugoslavia and huge human casualties," Tass quoted him as saying.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=2M42BAJAk84

The participants supported Milanovic's proposal to pursue the legal options involving financial compensation, as well as the possibility of opening criminal proceedings against western leaders who expressed their support for the aerial attacks.

Sixteen years ago, between March 24, 1999, and June 10, 1999, NATO aircraft flew over 38,000 combat missions in Yugoslavia, mostly concentrated on the capital Belgrade and in Kosovo, the flashpoint of the conflict.

Using fighter jets as well as long-range cruise missiles from warships in the Adriatic Sea, NATO destroyed vital strategic infrastructure, including bridges, government buildings and factories. The NATO campaign also targeted critical civil infrastructure, including power plants and water-processing facilities, causing substantial environmental and economic damage to the country.

Read moreUS military convoy parades through Eastern Europe (VIDEOS)

On May 7, NATO forces bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, killing three Chinese journalists. Washington and NATO apologized for the bombing, blaming it on an "outdated map" provided by the CIA.

The NATO campaign resulted not just in the destruction of infrastructure but the death of hundreds of civilians as well.

Human Rights Watch reported that "as few as 489 and as many as 528 Yugoslav civilians were killed in the 90 separate incidents" in the US-led NATO campaign.

Serbian sources report a much higher fatality rate, saying more than 2,000 civilians and 1,000 servicemen were killed in the NATO bombardments, while more than 5,000 people were wounded and over a thousand went missing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=o9tX8onPsnM

 

http://rt.com/news/243545-nato-serbia-bombing-yugoslavia/

Crimea, one year later

ON TARGET: Crimea, one year later

SCOTT TAYLOR ON TARGET
Published March 23, 2015 - 10:04am

It has been just over one year since Russian President Vladimir Putin orchestrated the virtually bloodless annexation of Crimea.

At that juncture, Viktor Yanukovych, Ukraine's elected president, had just been ousted by pro-West protesters following months of violent demonstrations in the streets of Kiev.

With Yanukovych officially deposed by a vote in parliament, the long-standing divisions within Ukraine rose to the fore. Ukrainians living east of the Dnieper River, many of them ethnic Russians, began their own violent demonstrations in rejection of the new interim administration in Kiev.

In the midst of this political turmoil and instability, Russian military personnel based in Crimea moved quickly to surround and disarm Ukrainian military garrisons with whom they shared the strategic peninsula.

Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union and independence of Ukraine in 1991, Russia had been leasing the port of Sebastopol, the home base for the Russian navy's Black Sea fleet.

In April 2010, the two countries negotiated the Kharkiv Pact and an extension of the lease until 2042. However, with Kiev under new management and threatening closer ties to the West, the Kremlin was taking no chances over any future eviction notice.

Despite the fact that the Ukrainian military outnumbered the Russians, they surrendered their weapons and bases without firing a single shot. In fact, the majority of the Ukrainian military personnel who were detained voluntarily re-enlisted in the Russian military, where they would receive a considerably more lucrative salary.

Those Ukrainian soldiers wishing to leave Crimea were allowed to do so, along with the majority of their major weapons systems, such as tanks and fighter jets.

To give an element of legitimacy to his annexation, Putin staged a hasty referendum in March 2014 that produced a result of over 95 per cent of the popular vote in favour of uniting Crimea to Russia.

This resulted in international howls of indignation, with Canada's then-foreign affairs minister, John Baird, likening Putin to Adolf Hitler.

Hillary Clinton, the American secretary of state, blustered that "You can't simply redraw the lines of the map of Europe." This would, of course, be news to any student of 20th-century history.

The Treaty of Versailles, following the First World War, saw the creation of numerous independent countries and territories that once belonged to the vanquished German, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires, while the Russian Bolsheviks, in turn, annexed territory to create the Soviet Union.

Ditto the end of the Second World War, when the victors rewarded allies and punished foes by redrawing the maps. Then came the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, which coincided with the start of the breakup of Yugoslavia and the division of the Czech and Slovak republics, not to mention the reunification of East and West Germany.

While many of these developments were bloodless, it was a different story in both the former Yugoslavia and the Caucasus. The bitter civil wars and border disputes in these two regions remain simmering global hot spots and frozen conflicts.

As for redrawing maps, it was Hillary Clinton's husband, then-president Bill Clinton, who was instrumental in leading NATO's intervention against Serbia in the spring of 1999. After a 78-day bombing campaign that killed more than 1,200 innocent civilians, Serbia capitulated and allowed NATO troops to enter the disputed province of Kosovo.

The Americans immediately began the construction of an enormous military base known as Camp Bondsteel, which remains a strategic foothold in the Balkans.

In February 2008, the ethnic Albanian Kosovar majority unilaterally declared independence and the United States was the first nation to redraw the map of Europe by recognizing the newly created state of Kosovo. Unlike Crimea, there was no referendum.

The thankful Albanian Kosovars officially recognized the contributions to the creation of their country. In Pristina, Kosovo's capital, there is a seven-storey portrait of a smiling Bill Clinton on Hillary Clinton Way.

In 2015, however, times are tough in Kosovo. Since last fall, a mass exodus of young Albanians has been underway, flooding into Europe, complaining of poverty, unemployment and widespread corruption in their new country.

This couldn't be further from the one-year litmus test taken among the newly annexed residents of Crimea. Obviously hoping to prove dissatisfaction with the annexation, a Canadian government-funded survey of 800 Crimean residents taken in January proved the exact opposite. The poll revealed that 82 per cent fully supported the annexation, 11 per cent partly supported it and a mere four per cent opposed it. The majority also reported that their standard of living had improved in the last year.

That evil Putin has some nerve gobbling up territory and making people happy.

About the Author

SCOTT TAYLOR ON TARGET

Scott Taylor is editor of Esprit de Corps magazine

E-Mail: staylor@herald.ca
Twitter: @EDC_Mag

http://thechronicleherald.ca/opinion/1276144-on-target-crimea-one-year-later

 

 

‘UK earmarking money for Estern Europe over Russia’

'UK earmarking money for E Europe over Russia'

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Sun Mar 22, 2015 2:10PM

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British Prime Minister David Cameron has announced the creation of a UK fund for five eastern European nations against the Russian "intimidation."

The so-called 'Good Governance Fund' is aimed at supporting the governments of Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina in carrying out political and economic reforms, said Cameron at the EU Summit in Brussels on Friday.

It will provide up to £20 million in its first year to the eastern European countries.

"UK expertise can play a crucial role in bringing about the reforms needed to build lasting stability in the region, especially in the face of Russian intimidation, and it is right that we step up our efforts alongside international partners," Cameron said.

Now the former London Bureau chief of Voice of Russia, Dmitry Linnik, believes the UK's move is an act of aggression.

"Well, it's this new kind of aggression towards Russia from the West that is creating the problems that we are living through now and it's a very worrying turn of events."

The fund is based on the model of the program set up by former British PM Margaret Thatcher called the Know-How Fund which was set up in 1989, after the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was developed to support countries that had been in the Soviet Union's sphere of influence, such as Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland and East Germany.

Ex-British PM Margaret Thatcher and former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev

"The interesting thing about that is that comparisons are not all together valid. This time the fund is aimed at isolating Russia, whereas back in 1989, the thinking was not along those lines. We know that Margaret Thatcher and the Soviet president, Mikhail Gorbachev, maintained a very positive relationship and it was in 1991," Linnik told Press TV's UK Desk on Sunday.  

"The similarity between the Thatcher plan and the Cameron plan is that the West, and Britain here, is only a tool, a bridgehead if you will, trying only to expand its own sphere of influence. It is not about limiting Russia's influence. It is about expanding its own."

Cameron's announcement of the fund comes as EU have leaders agreed to maintain economic sanctions against Russia over the Ukrainian crisis until the Minsk-2 deal is "fully implemented," said European Council President Donald Tusk on Thursday.

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http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2015/03/22/402949/UK-to-fund-E-Europe-against-Russia

Putin in film on Crimea: US masterminds behind Ukraine coup, helped train radicals

Published time: March 15, 2015 14:18
Edited time: March 15, 2015 15:25

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Vladimir Putin (Screenshot from 'Crimea - The Way Home' documentary aired by Rossiya 1 news channel)

The Ukrainian armed coup was organized from Washington, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated in an interview for a new documentary aired Sunday. The Americans tried to hide behind the Europeans, but Moscow saw through the trick, he added.

"The trick of the situation was that outwardly the [Ukrainian] opposition was supported mostly by the Europeans. But we knew for sure that the real masterminds were our American friends,"Putin said in a documentary, 'Crimea - The Way Home,' aired by Rossiya 1 news channel.

"They helped training the nationalists, their armed groups, in Western Ukraine, in Poland and to some extent in Lithuania," he added. "They facilitated the armed coup."

Putin said this approach was far from being the best dealing with any country, and a post-Soviet country like Ukraine specifically. Such countries have a short record of living under a new political system and remain fragile. Violating constitutional order in such a country inevitably deal a lot of damage to its statehood, the president said.

Read moreUS boosting 'anti-propaganda' budget, mulling 'increase of lethality' for Ukraine support – Nuland

"The law was thrown away and crashed. And the consequences were grave indeed. Part of the country agreed to it, while another part wouldn't accept it. The country was shattered," Putin explained.

He also accused the beneficiaries of the coup of planning an assassination of then-President Viktor Yanukovich. Russia was prepared to act to ensure his escape, Putin said.

"I invited the heads of our special services, the Defense Ministry and ordered them to protect the life of the Ukrainian president. Otherwise he would have been killed," he said, adding that at one point Russian signal intelligence, which was tracking the president's motorcade route, realized that he was about to be ambushed.

Yanukovich himself didn't want to leave and rejected the offer to be evacuated from Donetsk, Putin said. Only after spending several days in Crimea and realizing that "there was no one he could negotiate with in Kiev" he asked to be taken to Russia.

Viktor Yanukovich after a news conference in Rostov-on-Don (RIA Novosti)

The Russian president personally ordered preparation of the Crimean special operation the morning after Yanukovich fled, saying that "we cannot let the [Crimean] people be pushed under the steamroller of the nationalists."

"I [gave them] their tasks, told them what to do and how we must do it, and stressed that we would only do it if we were absolutely sure that this is what the people living in Crimea want us to do," Putin said. He added that an emergency public opinion poll indicated that at least 75 percent of the people wanted to join Russia.

"Our goal was not to take Crimea by annexing it. Our final goal was to allow the people express their wishes on how they want to live," he said.

"I decided for myself: what the people want will happen. If they want greater autonomy with some extra rights within Ukraine, so be it. If they decide otherwise, we cannot fail them. You know the results of the referendum. We did what we had to do," Putin said.

READ MORE: 95.7% of Crimeans in referendum voted to join Russia - preliminary results

He added that his personal involvement helped expedite things, because the people carrying out his decision had no reason to hesitate.

According to Putin, part of the operation was to deploy K-300P Bastion coastal defense missiles to demonstrate Russia's willingness to protect the peninsula from military attack.

"We deployed them in a way that made them seen clearly from space," Putin said.

The president assured that the Russian military were prepared for any developments and would have armed nuclear weapons if necessary. He personally was not sure that Western nations would not use military force against Russia, he added.

A tent camp of the supporters of Ukraine's integration with the EU on Maidan Square in Kiev where clashes between protesters and police began in February 18, 2014 (RIA Novosti / Alexey Furman)

The Russian president said the move to send Russian troops to secure Crimea and allow a referendum to be freely held there prevented major bloodshed on the peninsula.

"Considering the ethnic composition of the Crimean population, the violence there would have been worse [than in Kiev]. We had to act to prevent negative development, not to allow tragedies like the one that happened in Odessa, where dozens of people were burned alive," Putin said.

Read moreAs part of Russian territory Crimea can host nuclear weapons – Foreign Ministry

He acknowledged that there were some Crimean people, particularly members of the Crimean Tatar minority, who opposed the Russian operation.

"Some of the Crimean Tatars were under the influence of their leaders, some of whom are so to speak 'professional' fighters for the rights of the Tatars," he explained.

But at the same time the "Crimean militia worked together with the Tatars. And there were Tatars among the militia members," he stressed.

The Crimean people voted in a referendum to join Russia after rejecting a coup-imposed government that took power in Kiev in February 2014. The move sparked a major international controversy, as the new government's foreign backers accused Russia of annexing the peninsula through military force.

Moscow insists that the move was a legitimate act of self-determination and that the Russian troops acted only to provide security and not as an occupying force. Russian officials cite the example of Kiev's military crackdown on the dissenting eastern Donetsk and Lugansk regions, which claimed more than 6,000 lives since April 2014, as an example of bloodshed that Russia acted to prevent in Crimea.

http://rt.com/news/240921-us-masterminds-ukraine-putin/