> From my point of view, people in Ljubljana had every right to continue using the .yu domain if they wanted to, and they could've maybe made a deal to manage the domain together. But it seems to me this collides with the desire to be independent, so my assumption is they were kind of happy to switch to their own tld. Or maybe you know this is not the case?

According to the article they kept running the domain and using it for email for two years until Postel transferred it to Belgrade. (The article phrases it as though that email use was less important or less serious than the unspecified "work" that the group in Belgrade wanted to use it for, but that smells like a slanted narrative to me)