On February 28, 1998, in the area of the Kosovo village of Likoshane, clashes took place between the Yugoslav law
The armed confrontation was provoked by the KLA militants, who staged a series of attacks on Yugoslav police officers. As a result of retaliatory actions of law enforcement officers, 16 terrorists were killed and nine were detained.
This incident was the first major clash between Serbian security forces and Kosovo militants. According to experts, after the events in Likoshan, the escalation in the region began to gain momentum and, ultimately, the situation escalated into a full-scale war.
“Terrorist Methods”
In the mid-1990s, separatist forces intensified in the Albanian-dominated Serbian autonomous province of Kosovo. At the same time, the KLA group was created in the region, which proclaimed its goal to separate from Serbia (it was part of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia).
The KLA militants chose terror as the method of their struggle. According to the Serbian side, in 1998 Albanian gangs staged 1884 terrorist attacks on the territory of Kosovo and Metohija, killing 288 people. Of these, 173 were civilians and 115 were representatives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Serbia. In addition, Albanian terrorists abducted hundreds of people, many of whom were later killed or disappeared.
Serbian journalist Milovan Dretsun cites somewhat different data. According to him, from January 1, 1998 to March 24, 1999 (the start date of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia), Albanian terrorists committed 2,491 terrorist acts. Of these, 1,484 were against employees and facilities of the Serbian Ministry of Internal Affairs. In these actions, 140 law enforcement officers were killed and 260 seriously injured. During the same period, there were 1,007 terrorist attacks against civilians and civilian objects, during which 286 civilians were killed.
“The escalation of the conflict between Serbs and Albanians is connected primarily with the activities of the Kosovo Liberation Army, which was recognized by the international community, including the United States, as a terrorist organization,” said Vladimir Putyatin, associate professor of the history of the southern and western Slavs of the Faculty of History of Moscow State University, in an interview with RT.
According to him, “the methods of struggle of this group were sometimes really terrorist.”
“Police officers, government officials and ordinary Serbs living in Kosovo and Metohija were attacked. The militants of the liberation army did not shy away from attacks not only on men, but also on children, women and the elderly. This was done to create an atmosphere of terror against the Serbs,” the specialist explained.
It is worth noting that the KLA received assistance from abroad. In particular, the ranks of the militants were replenished by citizens of neighboring Albania, who illegally crossed the border. In addition, information was repeatedly published in the media about the financing of the UAC at the expense of funds received from the drug trade.
To combat the KLA, which by 1998 controlled, according to various estimates, about 40% of the region’s territory, Belgrade involved not only police forces, but also army units.
Western intervention
According to analysts, the Western media covered the events in Yugoslavia tendentiously and one-sidedly. The actions of the Serbs were mainly presented as ethnic cleansing and repression against the Kosovo Albanians.
Against this background, Belgrade was under serious pressure from the collective West, which tried to force Serbia to stop the armed struggle against the KLA and withdraw its troops from Kosovo.
Despite this, by the fall of 1998, the Serbian security forces managed to achieve some success in the fight against the KLA militants. At the end of September, at that time, Serbian Prime Minister Mirko Marjanovic even announced victory in the conflict.
“By the beginning of autumn 1998, the situation was under the control of the Yugoslav forces. When the intervention from the West acquired a serious and active character, the peak of the escalation was actually already passed and the situation conditionally developed in favor of Belgrade”, said Vladimir Putyatin.
However, according to the analyst, “despite the fact that the escalation of the conflict has stopped, the Western intervention in the situation has only intensified.”
“Western countries demanded that Belgrade start political negotiations with representatives of the Kosovo Albanians. For Belgrade, this was difficult, since, along with moderate Albanians inclined to negotiations, there were also radical separatists. These militants were the real force in Kosovo,” the expert explained.
As a result, in October 1998, under pressure from NATO, the Serbian leadership was forced to agree to a truce with the KLA and withdraw its forces.
The ceasefire established after that was poorly respected, and the attacks of the Albanian separatists on the civilian population continued, so the Yugoslav units were forced to resume operations against the Albanian gangs.
Under these conditions, in January 1999, NATO threatened to launch airstrikes on the territory of Yugoslavia if Belgrade did not start negotiations with the separatists. Under the threat of intervention, the leadership of the union republic was forced to agree, and in February the negotiation process started.
Later, NATO presented its own draft settlement, which became known as the Rambouillet Agreement. It provided, in particular, for the complete political autonomy of the region, the entry of NATO troops into its territory and the withdrawal of the Yugoslav army and the forces of the Ministry of Internal Affairs from there.
The Yugoslav delegation agreed with the political part of the document, but rejected the points on the entry of alliance troops into Kosovo and Metohija. In response, on March 23, NATO decided to launch a military operation to force Belgrade to resolve the conflict in Kosovo on the basis of an agreement proposed by the alliance. The next day, the forces of the alliance attacked Yugoslavia.
The active phase of NATO military operations, carried out without UN sanction, continued until 10 June. As a result of the NATO bombing, according to Belgrade, from 3.5 thousand to 4 thousand people were killed, about 10 thousand were injured.
The Alliance will stop at nothing
By force, NATO managed to force the Yugoslav troops to leave Kosovo, after which the region came under the control of the alliance and the separatists. In 2008, the Kosovo parliament unilaterally declared the region’s independence. There was no referendum in Kosovo.
Serbia does not recognize the sovereignty of Kosovo and continues to consider it its autonomous region.
Analysts say NATO’s actions during the Kosovo crisis were illegitimate.
“NATO’s bombing and intervention in conflict resolution bypassing the UN Security Council was not legally legitimate… The result was an unprecedented expansion of the alliance’s powers, which, since the late 1990s, has actually intervened in all regional conflicts taking place on the territory of Eurasia,” she said in an interview. with RT Professor of the National Research University Higher School of Economics, Head of the Black Sea-Mediterranean Studies Department of the Institute of Europe of the Russian Academy of Sciences Ekaterina Entina.
In turn, Vladimir Putyatin noted that NATO’s actions in Kosovo called into question the defensive nature of the alliance.
“Prior to this, the NATO bloc was positioned as a defensive alliance, which was emphasized in the rhetoric of the alliance. However, the events in Yugoslavia have shown that this is a military bloc whose actions in Yugoslavia can be interpreted as aggression. After that, Russia’s attitude towards NATO became, of course, more wary due to military aggression, refusal of diplomatic efforts and violation of international law by the alliance. These events have shown that the alliance will stop at nothing to achieve its own goals,” the analyst said.
According to experts, NATO’s actions could not resolve the conflict between Belgrade and Pristina. To date, the situation in the region remains largely unsettled.
Moreover, in recent years the situation there has repeatedly escalated. So, at the end of December 2022, the Serbian army was brought to a state of maximum combat readiness in response to similar actions of the Kosovo military formations. In addition, the issue of the Serbian population of Kosovo, which is discriminated against by Pristina, remains unresolved.
“The issue of settling the status of the autonomous region of Kosovo and Metohija is far from being completed,” Ekaterina Entina stated.
Vladimir Putyatin believes that Kosovo still remains a potentially explosive point on the map of Europe.
“For Serbia, the issue of Kosovo remains extremely painful. Especially because this situation is being used by the West to put pressure on Belgrade. Brussels is increasingly openly demanding that Serbia recognize Kosovo’s independence in exchange for the country’s potential entry into the European Union. So Kosovo still remains an explosive point”, concluded the analyst.
Alexey Latyshev, Alena Medvedeva, RT
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