These events can be considered a kind of starting point, after which the world changed. The last scene of the famous film "Underground" by Emir Kusturica ends with a shot of the earth splitting open and the phrase: "There was such a country."
During civil war Four of the six union republics (Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia) separated from Greater Yugoslavia at the end of the 20th century. At the same time, UN peacekeeping forces led by the United States were introduced into the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and then the autonomous province of Kosovo. Meanwhile, the country became Lesser Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro). After the independence referendum in Montenegro, the last remnants of the former federation faded into history, Serbia and Montenegro also became independent states.
Reasons behind Balkan crisis, lie not only in politics, it is a whole tangle of political, economic, national factors, reinforced and aggravated by powerful pressure from the outside, from the United States and a number of European countries interested in the territorial redistribution.
The copper industry of Yugoslavia was a tasty morsel for the West. Perhaps that is why NATO planes did not bomb the enterprises of this complex. In addition, Kosovo contains the largest undeveloped reserves in Europe coal. Another important reason could be the destruction of the Yugoslav military-industrial complex, which sold cheap weapons to Africa, North Korea and the Gulf countries. Another reason is the elimination of the Yugoslav tobacco industry as a serious competitor to US factories in Eastern Europe.
In the spring of 1998, a new president was elected in Albania - the socialist Fatos Nano, who replaced Sali Berisha, a supporter of the idea of a "Greater Albania". In this regard, the prospect of solving the Kosovo problem has become more realistic. However, bloody clashes between the so-called " Liberation Army Kosovo" (KLA) and government troops continued until the fall, and only in early September Milosevic spoke in favor of the possibility of granting self-government to the region (by this time the KLA armed forces had been pushed back to the Albanian border). Another crisis erupted in connection with the disclosure of the murder of 45 Albanians in the village Racak, attributed to the Serbs. The threat of NATO air strikes loomed over Belgrade. By the fall of 1998, the number of refugees from Kosovo exceeded 200 thousand people.
The pretext for the war against Yugoslavia turned out to be far-fetched. Finnish scientists who studied what happened stated in an official report that there was no massacre in the village of Racak in Southern Serbia on January 15, 1999!
At this time, anti-Serbian propaganda reached its climax. They said, for example, that the Serbs came up with a sophisticated way of dealing with the Albanians: they opened gas in the basement of residential buildings, lit a candle in the attic, and then they had enough time to leave the house before the explosion. However, quite soon this type of murder disappeared from official documents NATO. Apparently, they realized that the gas was heavier than air and could not reach the attic.
Then the controlled media began to spin another myth, allegedly the Serbs set up a real concentration camp for thousands of Albanians at the stadium in Pristina. With horror in his eyes, the German Minister of Defense Rudolf Scharping said that real fascist methods were used there, that teachers were shot in front of children. Interviews with people living nearby showed that the stadium was empty, except for the fact that it was sometimes used as an airfield. But NATO bombed it anyway, just in case, “forgetting” about the prisoners.
In 1992, American journalist Peter Brock processed 1,500 articles from newspapers and magazines published by various news agencies in the West and came to the conclusion that the ratio of publications against the Serbs to in their favor was 40:1.
“It was confirmed that they intend to use force. This was confirmed by Al Gore (former US Vice President - Vesti.Ru) during a conversation with me. The conversation took place on board the plane. I was two and a half hours from US territory, invited the commander plane and told him that he needed to turn around. Then he called President Boris Yeltsin and said that he had made this decision. He asked if there was enough fuel to fly to Moscow," says Yevgeny Primakov, who was the prime minister of the Russian Federation at the time.
Why didn't the US wait for Security Council sanctions? Russia and China, which have veto power in the Security Council, spoke out against NATO attacks. US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright knew that the council would not authorize air strikes.
If you look at the last four resolutions of the UN Security Council regarding the Kosovo problem, they remain unchanged in the paragraph that postulates the commitment of all UN member states to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
In this context, it does not even matter that by its actions NATO violates its own regulations and treaty relations with other countries. There is a fact of violation of the fundamentals international law, that is, there will no longer be a global body in the world capable of resolving international conflicts. The UN will cease to fulfill its functions. Which was later proven.
"I had a very tough conversation with Milosevic. And he made concessions. He said that he would guarantee the return of Albanian refugees to Kosovo, that he wanted to start negotiations with Albanian leaders. But the only thing he refused to do was withdraw the special forces. He said that then genocide against the Serbs will begin,” continues Yevgeny Primakov.
“When you talk with the official representative of Germany, Belgium, France, Greece, Italy, Spain, it turns out that they are categorically against this violence. But the right of consensus, the right of one state to disrupt this operation, was not used,” explains Leonid Ivashov, in 1996 -2001 – Head of the Main Directorate of International Military Cooperation of the Russian Defense Ministry.
It is impossible to ignore the so-called agreements signed in Rambouillet (France). The story of this signing is one of the strangest. As is known, the contact group on Kosovo worked together with the leaders of the Kosovo Albanians and representatives of the Federal Yugoslavia to develop these decisions. Russia was also involved in the discussion of agreements. At first, there was talk only of a political memorandum, which declared ways to give Kosovo certain freedoms in terms of autonomy, but within the framework of Yugoslavia. When many points of this small document were settled, multi-page appendices appeared concerning military and police issues.
It was in them that the entry of peacekeeping forces into Kosovo was secured. Russia was categorically against linking political and military documents in a single package. The Yugoslav delegation was also outraged by this approach to negotiations. One got the feeling that steps had been taken to put forward obviously unacceptable conditions to Yugoslavia and to disrupt the signing. And so it happened. The Yugoslav delegation left Rambouillet, after which the Kosovo Albanian delegation demonstratively signed the entire package.
On March 24, 1999, NATO aircraft began bombing the territory of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The first missile strikes, on the command of NATO Secretary General Javier Solana, were launched at about 20.00 local time (22.00 Moscow time) on the radar installations of the Yugoslav army located on the Montenegrin coast of the Adriatic Sea. At the same time, a military airfield several kilometers from Belgrade and large industrial facilities in the city of Pancevo, located less than twenty kilometers from the capital of the republic. In the majority major cities Martial law was declared for the first time since World War II in Serbia and Montenegro.
IN military operation against Yugoslavia, which lasted 78 days, 19 NATO countries participated in one form or another. North Atlantic Alliance decided to start aggression after failed negotiations with the leadership of the FRY on the issue of Kosovo and Metohija in the French city of Rambouillet and Paris in February and March 1999. The bombing stopped on June 9, 1999 after representatives of the FRY army and NATO in the Macedonian city of Kumanovo signed a military-technical agreement on the withdrawal of troops and police of the Federal Yugoslavia from the territory of Kosovo and on the deployment of international armed forces on the territory of the region. A day later, the UN Security Council adopted a corresponding resolution on this matter, numbered 1244.
The damage that was caused to industrial, transport and civilian facilities of the FRY as a result of almost three months of bombing, according to various estimates, ranges from 60 to 100 billion dollars. Number of military deaths and civilians has not yet been precisely established. It ranges from 1200 to 2500 people.
“800 children alone were killed. They bombed not only bridges, industrial enterprises, but also railway stations, hospitals, kindergartens, churches built in the Middle Ages,” says Borislav Milosevic, Ambassador of Yugoslavia to the Russian Federation from 1998 to 2001.
“From March 23 to 24, I was in Serbia, I could hear the drone of planes overhead. But even at that moment I thought that they would fly to the border and turn back. Normal human logic did not give me the opportunity to realize the full scale of the lawlessness and evil that had occurred,” - recalls Alexander Kravchenko, who headed the domestic Union Republika Srpska volunteers.
On the bombs of British planes were visible the inscriptions: “Happy Easter”, “We hope you like it”, “Do you still want to be a Serb?”
During this aggression, 35 thousand combat air sorties were carried out, in which about 1000 aircraft and helicopters were involved, 79,000 tons of explosives were dropped (including 156 containers with 37,440 cluster bombs prohibited by international law).
“As a rule, journalists who had already been to various hot spots worked there. We didn’t know what would happen next. It seemed to us that all of Yugoslavia would turn into ruins. We went and filmed bridges, orphanages... Despite the information that was being leaked “The Americans, their “precision” weapons made serious mistakes. Let’s remember the Chinese embassy, where people died,” says Andrei Baturin, in 1999 special correspondent TSN in Yugoslavia.
In February 2008, the Serbian region of Kosovo, with the support of the United States, declared independence, and most Western countries recognize this independence. For the same far-fetched reasons that accompanied decades of interference in the life of Yugoslavia.
“I would like to think that things might end up in the fact that, under current conditions, the northern part of Kosovo with the Serbian population will be annexed to Serbia. Maybe things will come to that someday,” says Yevgeny Primakov. “Maybe there won’t be an aggravation right away.” the same, but stabilizing the situation will be difficult. There will be floating stability."
With the same “success” today they are implanting “democracy” in Iraq and Afghanistan. The scenarios for the development of events in Ukraine and Georgia are extremely similar to the Yugoslav version. Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic died in The Hague prison, according to doctors - from a heart attack.
But the United States and the European Union can say that their aggression against the Serbs was justified and NATO bombing will have a chance to go down in history with a “plus” sign, because there was a “struggle for peace”.
Nobel Prize peace will be awarded to the special envoy for resolving the conflict in Kosovo, Martti Ahtisaari, with the wording “for those efforts in resolving international conflicts efforts he has made for three decades."
The United States, due to the situation around Syria, accusing Moscow of “war crimes”, said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
“Now, against the backdrop of what is happening around Syria, our Western partners, primarily the Americans and the British, are already reaching the point of public insults in their hysteria, using words such as “barbarity,” “ war crime“,” Lavrov said in an interview for the film “I have firmly decided everything. Evgeny Primakov” on the Rossiya 1 TV channel.
In response, Lavrov recalled that NATO countries unleashed the first armed aggression in Europe since the end of World War II, attacking Yugoslavia in 1999.
“The aggression against Yugoslavia was, of course, just that: aggression. By the way, this was the first armed attack in Europe on a sovereign state after 1945,” said the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry.
“Let me remind you that the aggression against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was associated with attacks on a huge number of civilian objects, including, by the way, Serbian television, bridges over which civilian passenger trains ran, and much more,” Lavrov noted.
NATO is on the side of the militants
Since the mid-1990s, Albanian separatists in the province of Kosovo, which was part of Serbia, have carried out armed attacks against government officials, as well as the Serbian population of the region.
In 1998, the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) declared the beginning of open armed struggle for separating the region from Serbia. In response, Yugoslav security forces launched an operation against the terrorists.
Throughout 1998, NATO countries increased pressure on Belgrade to stop hostilities in Kosovo. On September 23, 1998, the UN Security Council adopted resolution number 1199, calling on the parties to a ceasefire.
The immediate reason for NATO's intervention in the conflict was the incident in Racak, when 45 Albanians were killed during an attack on a village held by Kosovo Liberation Army militants. Representatives of Western countries claimed that the Albanians were executed, representatives of Yugoslavia - that they died in battle.
Wherein Western countries ignored numerous cases of massacres committed by KLA militants against Serbs.
The United States tried to obtain a NATO mandate to conduct a military operation against Yugoslavia, but this turned out to be impossible due to the categorical disagreement to support such a resolution on the part of two permanent members of the UN Security Council: Russia and China.
"Allied Force": 78 days of destruction
Under these conditions, NATO issued an ultimatum to the leadership of Yugoslavia demanding the withdrawal of troops from Kosovo, threatening to use force in case of refusal.
On March 24, 1999, after the terms of the ultimatum were not fulfilled, general secretary NATO Javier Solana gave orders to the commander of NATO forces in Europe, the American General Wesley Clark launch a military operation against Yugoslavia. The operation was codenamed " Allied force" Already on the evening of March 24, NATO aircraft bombed Belgrade, Pristina, Uzice, Novi Sad, Kragujevac, Pancevo, Podgorica and other cities.
Novi Sad during the bombing. Photo: Creative Commons
The beginning of NATO aggression against Yugoslavia became the cause of the first large-scale crisis in Russian-American relations since the collapse of the USSR. Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov, who was on his way to visit the United States, after receiving information about the start of the bombing, turned the plane over the Atlantic and urgently returned to Russia.
NATO bombing of Yugoslavia continued from March 24 to June 10, 1999. Both military and civilian targets were subjected to air strikes.
According to Yugoslav authorities, casualties among civilian population amounted to 1,700 people killed and more than 10,000 wounded, more than 800 people were missing. Among the victims of the bombing were about 400 children.
14 countries took part in the operation, with 1,200 aircraft at their disposal. The naval group consisted of 3 aircraft carriers, 6 attack aircraft submarines, 2 cruisers, 7 destroyers, 13 frigates, 4 large landing ship. The total manpower of NATO forces involved in the operation exceeded 60 thousand people.
During the operation, over 78 days, NATO aircraft flew 35,219 sorties and more than 23,000 bombs and missiles were dropped and fired.
During the bombing, 89 factories and factories, 128 other industrial and service facilities, 120 energy facilities, 14 airfields, 48 hospitals and clinics, 118 radio and TV repeaters, 82 bridges, 61 road junction and a tunnel, 25 post and telegraph offices, 70 schools, 18 kindergartens, 9 university buildings and 4 dormitories, 35 churches, 29 monasteries.
Among the sites that were destroyed by NATO bombing was the industrial complex in Pancevo: a nitrogen plant, an oil refinery and a petrochemical complex.
Toxic chemicals and compounds were released into the atmosphere, water and soil, posing a threat to human health and ecological systems throughout the Balkans.
Due to this Serbian Minister of Health Leposava Milicevic stated: “Our chemical plants were not even bombed Adolf Gitler! NATO calmly does this, destroying rivers, poisoning the air, killing people, the country. A brutal experiment is being conducted on our people using the latest weapons.”
During the attacks on Yugoslavia, ammunition with depleted uranium was used, which provoked contamination of the area and an outbreak of cancer in subsequent years.
"Tomahawk" for journalists
During the operation, NATO forces committed actions that could directly be considered war crimes.
On April 12, 1999, a NATO aircraft attacked passenger train No. 393, traveling from Belgrade to Ristovac, with missiles. As a result of the attack, 14 people were killed and 16 were injured. All the dead and injured were civilians.
The NATO representative, acknowledging the fact of the attack, expressed regret and explained that the pilot simply “wanted to destroy the bridge.” International Tribunal By former Yugoslavia, reviewing this incident, considered that the bridge “was a legal target” and the passenger train was not deliberately hit.
On April 23, 1999, the Radio and Television of Serbia building in Belgrade was destroyed by Tomahawk cruise missiles. 16 employees of the television center who were at their workplace at the time of the bombing and broadcast to live nightly news report, were killed and 16 more were injured. NATO declared the television center building a legal target on the grounds that the journalists were waging a “propaganda campaign.”
On May 7, 1999 it was struck bomb attack on the building of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. Xinhua News Agency journalist killed Shao Yunhuan, journalist of the People's Daily newspaper Xu Xinghu and his wife Zhu Ying.
NATO said the strike was carried out by mistake. The United States paid $28 million to China for the destruction of the building. diplomatic mission, as well as $4.5 million to the relatives of the victims and embassy employees who were injured.
"We are sincerely sorry"
On May 7, 1999, NATO aircraft attacked residential areas of the city of Nis with cluster bombs. As a result of the bombing, 15 people were killed and another 18 were injured. NATO Secretary General Javier Solana said: “Our target was an airfield. We sincerely regret the civilian casualties. The alliance had no intention of attacking their lives and will take every precaution to avoid such incidents."
On May 13, 1999, NATO aircraft bombed the village of Korisa, where Albanian refugees were located. At least 48 people were killed in the attack, and more than 60 were injured.
On May 16, NATO Secretary General Javier Solana accused the Serbs of killing Kosovo Albanians in the village of Korisha. In an interview with the BBC, he stated that Kosovar refugees were being used in the village of Korishe, which is "without a doubt" command post» Serbian army, as “human shields”. Therefore, although refugees died and suffered from alliance bombs, the blame for what happened lies with the Serbs, according to a statement by the bloc's secretary general. Press Secretary Jimmy Shea also accused Yugoslav troops of deliberately placing about 600 refugees near military installations in Koris. Shea said that this incident, as well as the fact that the Serbs may continue to use Kosovo Albanians as “human shields”, will not force NATO to abandon the bombing.
Western journalists working in the area of the village of Korisa said that there were no Serb military installations there, and the bombing could have been a blunder by NATO.
Verdict: The Serbs are to blame for everything
On June 10, 1999, the UN Security Council adopted resolution number 1244, according to which the withdrawal of Yugoslav troops and police forces from Kosovo was approved. The region was transferred under international control.
Thus, there was a de facto separation of Kosovo from Yugoslavia, which was legally formalized in February 2008.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia accused the Serbian leadership and Serbian intelligence services of crimes against humanity against the Albanian population of Kosovo.
Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, indicted by the ICTY for war crimes in Kosovo, died in prison during his trial in The Hague in 2006 as a result of a heart attack. Before this, several requests from Milosevic for assistance medical care in Russia due to heart disease were rejected by the tribunal. The trial of Slobodan Milosevic was closed due to the death of the accused.
No NATO official was held responsible for attacks on civilian targets and civilian deaths during Operation Allied Force.
(Operation Allied Force) is a military air operation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) from March 24 to June 10, 1999. The American campaign within the framework of the operation was codenamed Noble Anvil. In some sources it appears under the name "Merciful Angel".
The reason for international intervention was interethnic conflict between Albanians and Serbs who historically lived in Kosovo. On September 23, 1998, the UN Security Council approved resolution No. 1199, which demanded that the authorities of the FRY and the leadership of the Kosovo Albanians ensure a ceasefire in Kosovo and begin negotiations without delay.
The situation worsened especially strongly after the incident in the village of Racak on January 15, 1999, when a major armed clash occurred between representatives of the Yugoslav security forces and militants of the Kosovo Liberation Army.
Negotiations held in February-March 1999 in Rambouillet and Paris (France). The parties were unable to reach an agreement; the President of the FRY, Slobodan Milosevic, refused to sign the military annexes to the agreement on resolving the crisis.
On March 24, 1999, without the sanction of the UN Security Council, the NATO alliance entered the territory of the FRY. The decision to launch the operation was made by the then NATO Secretary General Javier Solana.
The official reason At the beginning of hostilities, the presence of Serbian troops in the territory of the region of Kosovo and Metohija was announced. Serbian authorities have also been accused of ethnic cleansing.
In the first month of Operation Allied Force, NATO aircraft flew an average of about 350 combat missions daily. At the NATO summit in Washington on April 23, 1999, alliance leaders decided to intensify the air campaign.
In total, during the operation, NATO forces, according to various sources, carried out from 37.5 to 38.4 thousand combat sorties, during which more than 900 targets were attacked on the territory of Serbia and Montenegro, and more than 21 thousand tons of explosives were dropped.
During the airstrikes, prohibited types of ammunition containing radioactive impurities, mainly depleted uranium (U 238), were used.
Soon after the start military aggression The parliament of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia voted for Russia and Belarus to join the union. Russian President Boris Yeltsin blocked this process because similar solution could give rise to whole line international difficulties.
The bombing stopped on June 9, 1999 after representatives of the FRY army and NATO in the Macedonian city of Kumanovo signed a military-technical agreement on the withdrawal of troops and police of the Federal Yugoslavia from the territory of Kosovo and on the deployment of international armed forces on the territory of the region.
The number of military and civilians killed during the operation has not yet been precisely established. According to Serbian authorities, about 2.5 thousand people were killed during the bombing, including 89 children. 12.5 thousand people were injured.
The human rights organization Human Rights Watch has confirmed 90 incidents in which civilians were killed as a result of NATO bombing.
According to the organization, between 489 and 528 were killed during Operation Allied Force. civilians.
More than 60% of the lives of the civilian population were claimed by 12 military incidents, among them an airstrike on a convoy of Albanian refugees from Djakovica (April 14), during which 70 to 75 people were killed and more than 100 were injured; a raid on the cities of Surdulica (April 27) and Nis (May 7), an attack on a bus on a bridge near Pristina (May 1), a strike on the Albanian village of Korisa (May 14), during which, according to various sources, from 48 to 87 were killed civilians.
According to official NATO data, during the campaign the alliance lost two military personnel (the crew of an American An 64 helicopter that crashed during a training flight in Albania).
About 863 thousand people, primarily Serbs living in Kosovo, voluntarily left the region, another 590 thousand became internally displaced.
The final amount of damage that was caused to industrial, transport and civilian facilities in the FRY was not announced. According to various estimates, it was measured in amounts from 30 to 100 billion dollars. About 200 were destroyed or seriously damaged industrial enterprises, oil storage facilities, energy facilities, infrastructure facilities, including 82 railway and automobile bridge. At least 100 historical and architectural monuments, which were under state protection and under the protection of UNESCO, were damaged.
On June 10, the UN Security Council adopted resolution No. 1244, according to which an international civilian security presence was created in Kosovo and Metohija. The document also ordered the withdrawal of FRY military, police and paramilitary forces from Kosovo, the free return of refugees and displaced persons and unimpeded access to the territory of organizations providing humanitarian assistance, as well as an increase in the degree of self-government for Kosovo.
On June 12, 1999, the first units of the international forces led by NATO - KFOR (Kosovo Force, KFOR) entered the region. Initially, the number of KFOR was about 50 thousand people. At the beginning of 2002, the contingent of peacekeepers was reduced to 39 thousand, by the end of 2003 to 17.5 thousand military personnel.
As of early December 2013, the unit's strength was about 4.9 thousand soldiers from more than 30 countries.
The Independent Commission of Inquiry into War Crimes of NATO Leaders against Yugoslavia, established on 6 August 1999 at the initiative of Swedish Prime Minister Hans Göran Persson, concluded that NATO's military intervention was illegal because the alliance had not received prior approval from the UN Security Council. However, the Allies' actions were justified by the fact that all diplomatic means of resolving the conflict had been exhausted.
The commission criticized the use of cluster bombs by NATO aircraft, as well as the bombing of chemical industrial complexes and oil plants on the territory of the FRY, which caused significant environmental damage.
In March 2002, the UN confirmed radioactive contamination in Kosovo as a result of NATO bombing.
The material was prepared based on information from RIA Novosti and open sources
Operation Allied Force ( original title "Decisive Power") - a military operation of NATO against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in the period from March 24 to June 10, 1999.
The decision to launch an operation bypassing the UN Security Council was made by the then NATO Secretary General Javier Solana after the failure of negotiations in Rambouillet and Paris, during which the President of the FRY, Slobodan Milosevic, refused to sign the military annexes to the agreement on resolving the Kosovo crisis.
Serbian authorities were accused of ethnic cleansing. The official reason for the outbreak of hostilities was the presence of Serbian troops in the territory of the region of Kosovo and Metohija.
The main part of the military operation consisted of the use of aircraft to bomb strategic military and civilian targets on Serbian territory.
The basis of the NATO group participating in the operation was the naval and air force formations of the USA, Great Britain, France, and Germany. Belgium, Hungary, Denmark, Spain, Italy, Canada, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, and Turkey took direct part in the operation by providing armed forces or territory for their deployment. Air space or the territory for the deployment of NATO forces was provided by neutral states: Albania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Romania.
The number of aircraft involved exceeded 1000 units. The Navy was represented by detachments of US and NATO warships deployed in the Adriatic Sea, and a permanent NATO formation in the Mediterranean Sea.
The first missile strikes were launched around 20:00 local time (22:00 Moscow time) on radar installations of the FRY army located on the Montenegrin coast of the Adriatic Sea. At the same time, a military airfield several kilometers from Belgrade and large industrial facilities in the city of Pancevo, located less than twenty kilometers from the capital of the FRY, were attacked by missiles. Martial law was declared in most major cities of Serbia and Montenegro for the first time since World War II.
During the 78-day aggression, NATO aircraft carried out approximately 2,300 missile and bomb attacks on 990 targets in Serbia and Montenegro, using prohibited types of ammunition containing radioactive impurities, mainly depleted uranium (U-238). 14 thousand bombs were dropped on Yugoslavia (in total 23 thousand bombs and missiles) with a total weight of more than 27 thousand tons.
The bombing stopped on June 9, 1999 after representatives of the FRY army and NATO in the Macedonian city of Kumanovo signed a military-technical agreement on the withdrawal of troops and police of the Federal Yugoslavia from the territory of Kosovo and on the deployment of international armed forces on the territory of the region.
On June 10, NATO Secretary General Javier Solana ordered a halt to air attacks. On the same day, the UN Security Council adopted resolution No. 1244. In particular, this document provided for the deployment of a military peacekeeping contingent to the territory of Kosovo and Metohija, the number of which soon reached 37 thousand military personnel representing the armies of 36 countries.
During 78 days of continuous bombing of Yugoslav territory, about 2,000 civilians were killed. 1,002 military and police personnel were killed in Kosovo by bombs, cruise missiles and in clashes with Albanian terrorists.
According to official NATO data, during the campaign the alliance lost two military personnel (the crew of an American An-64 helicopter that crashed during a training flight in Albania).
The final amount of damage that was caused to industrial, transport and civilian facilities in the FRY was not announced. According to various estimates, it was measured in amounts from 50 to 100 billion dollars. About 200 industrial enterprises, oil storage facilities, energy facilities, and infrastructure facilities, including 82 railway and road bridges, were destroyed or seriously damaged.
About 90 historical and architectural monuments, more than 300 buildings of schools, universities, libraries, and more than 20 hospitals were destroyed. About 40 thousand residential buildings were completely destroyed or damaged.
Massive bombings turned the entire territory of Yugoslavia into a zone environmental disaster. The bombing of oil refineries and petrochemical plants resulted in black fallout acid rain. Oil, petroleum products and toxic substances affected the water system of Yugoslavia and other Balkan countries.