They last gesture was massive ethnic cleansing. The US intervened when things went out of hand.
Putin risks to end up like Milosevic, a war criminal.
Now, even if those things were true, they are claimed by the proponents of bombing, enemies if you will, the same way that Putin is claiming there is a genocide of million Ukrainians in Ukraine. Do you believe your enemies?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten-Day_War
NATO bombing was not out of the blue. The head of Yugoslavia was a similar mad man (to Putin), just warring out of desperation. The best proof one has of his lunacy is the fact that Montenegro split from Serbia without any deaths. How did this happen? Due to the mad man dying in 2000. I'm pretty sure he would have enacted order by butchering civilians again, inside "his" borders.
Serbia is also the only country out of these conflicts that does not guarantee seat in the parliament for the exYugoslav minorities. Even though the leadership displayed aggression that was successfully deflected, the defenders made a deal to guarantee inclusion of the Serbian minority in the parliament (Croatia, Kosovo etc.)
Still, we have a country like Germany, that self-flagellates for decades and the sentiment of the majority is quite clear. While the general sentiment of people/press in Serbia is that NATO bombing is equivalent to Putin bombing Ukraine. and yeah, every now and then, the most popular Serbian (Monacoan) tennis player will say things like "Kosovo is Serbia" with complete indifference and still be the Jesus like figure his father makes him out to be.
Nobody said it was out of the blue, but it was illegal, wrong and plain terrorist like.
>The best proof one has of his lunacy is the fact that Montenegro split from Serbia without any issues. How did this happen? Lucikly, the mad man died in 2000.
And the best proof of NATO lunacy is that Kosovo declared independence in 2008 because they feared Serbia which at that point wasn't in Kosovo for almost 10 years, during which Kosovar population carried out pogroms of Serbs while the UN forces just watched.
Also Milošević died in 2006, never convicted of any war crimes. Later rulings on other people incriminated him but the same can be said for Tuđman. So, I guess if you die early you are not a war criminal.
>Serbia is also the only country out of these conflicts that does not guarantee seat in the parliament for the exYugoslav minorities.
It guarantees us a seat in the parliament, you just have to pass a laughably low percentage of the general vote. As a minority from Serbia, there's lot of problems in that country but minority representation is not one of them. If I wanted I could go through life without ever using Serbian language, I am not sure the same can be said for a lot of EU countries.
>While the general sentiment of people/press in Serbia is that NATO bombing is equivalent to Putin bombing Ukraine.
Because it is the same, a territory within a country decided it wanted to be independent and it is supported by an outside imperial force.
Yeah, I guess he stopped existing in 2000 and had nothing to do with the peaceful referendum.
> Because it is the same, a territory within a country decided it wanted to be independent and it is supported by an outside imperial force.
How can you believe this? Which part of Ukraine declared independence? What country was supposed to be created out of this independence? Which leaders decided they wanted to create a new independent territory?
> I am not sure the same can be said for a lot of EU countries.
Well, if your country is in EU, the citizens of EU are not forced to learn any language, even if they live outside of their country of origin. Language requirements for non-EU exist due to EU being an extremely lucrative place to live. Moving to Serbia and trying to hop on social benefits will not be as lucrative, so language requirement for citizenship might be unnecessary.
> It guarantees us a seat in the parliament, you just have to pass a laughably low percentage of the general vote.
In Croatia and Kosovo, there is no low percentage threshold. You are automatically in. There's no reason to believe the threshold is achievable, given that people in general do not vote.
Didn't those two breakaway republics declare independence?
>Well, if your country is in EU, the citizens of EU are not forced to learn any language, even if they live outside of their country of origin. Language requirements for non-EU exist due to EU being an extremely lucrative place to live. Moving to Serbia and trying to hop on social benefits will not be as lucrative, so language requirement for citizenship might be unnecessary.
I am not talking about EU citizens moving to another country, I am talking about minorities living in Serbia.
I am a part of minority that lived in the now Serbian territory for over 250 years and there's no legal requirement for us to learn Serbian. You can live your perfectly happy life without it. We have our schools, our communities so learning the Serbian language is not a requisite although most people learn it because it offers some benefits.
I found it odd that you thought I was talking about foreigners.
You mentioned that this cannot be said for a lot of EU countries. Turks born in EU do not have to learn German. Immigration within EU is free from language requirement too.
I do not even understand why do you think minorities not learning Serbian is impressive? Croatia and Kosovo both have schools that can use Serbian in their curriculum and no one is forcing Croatian on them. Similar things exist for Czech and Hungarian. No one is forcing these minorities to go to schools to learn Croatian.
> Didn't those two breakaway republics declare independence?
And were immediately annexed by Russia? How independent is that? Who's the new cultural head of these independent republics?
So Turks in Germany can have schools in Turkish for their children? Do you have a source for this?
>I do not even understand why do you think minorities not learning Serbian is impressive?
Because language rights are central for the survival of minority communities.
>Croatia and Kosovo both have schools that can use Serbian in their curriculum and no one is forcing Croatian on them.
Yeah, when they are not being stoned in Kosovo or have their Cyrillic signs smashed in Croatia.
Sure: https://www.schulentwicklung.nrw.de/materialdatenbank/materi...
That's the official lesson plan for non-German lessons in NRW; other German states have similar plans (teaching is devolved to the states in Germany). Notice that this is the plan used in the state-sponsored lessons; private schools are free to use their own plans.
1. The right to mother tongue: wherever in the world, the child must learn the mother tongue(s) of their parents to support the cognitive and psychological development.
2. The right to participate in the society as an equal: the child must learn the official language(s) of the society well enough to be able to understand and participate in the democracy, business, art etc.
On top of that, the bulk of the school curriculum can be in a yet another language, no problem, as long as these rights are ensured as well.
>And were immediately annexed by Russia? How independent is that? Who's the new cultural head of these independent republics?
They were not immediately annexed, no. Russia didn't even recognize them for a couple of years.
Crimea for some reason was annexed, despite leadership in Crimea wanting the same status given to two countries mentioned above.
Similarly, Ukranian army is not targeting Russian civilians in these regions and is not banishing them to Russia. There is no displacement of millions of Russians in Ukraine.
If you are trying to say "NATO bombing of Serbia is justified", therefore "Russia war against Ukraine should be too", therefore hypocrites, it does not really work.
In a way, they were implementing a century old policy of a guy named Vaso Cubrilovic who argued that Albanians should be expelled[2] from the lands Serbia (precursor of Yugoslavia) took in 1913.
What NATO did, is stopping exactly this from happening.
[1] https://www.hrw.org/report/2001/10/26/under-orders/war-crime...
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Expulsion_of_the_Albania...
And as for that supposed policy of Albanian expulsion, by how much did the percentage of Albanians diminish during the Serbian rule of Kosovo? And by how much did the number of Serbs diminish during the Albanian rule of Kosovo?
https://www.rferl.org/a/yugoslavia-hague-tribunal-major-mome...
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/bosnian-serb-military-l...
Multiple ethnic "serbs" were convicted of genociding muslims.
Ethnic Serbs in Bosnia are a different thing, same as ethnic Bosniak in Serbia are a different thing. Also I found it telling that used Serbs in quotation marks.
Justifying bombing of Serbia because of Bosnia would be like justifying bombing of Belgium because of the Netherlands. Yeah, sure they are kinda allies but that's it.
Bombing of Serbia was a bombing of European cities, specifically bombing of civilian population centers far from the front to terrorize the population. Also without UN approval.