”On the eve of the 25th anniversary of the aggression of the States members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, the Chambers of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation emphasize the need to give a fair assessment of this flagrant violation of the norms of international law, which has led to the destabilization of the work of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and has had a negative impact on relations between European States.
The Chambers of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation express their deep concern at the continuing attempts by the collective West to present to the international community the aggression against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia as a peacekeeping operation, to forget the victims of the NATO bombardment and to blame the Serbs for starting wars in the Balkans.
In the period from March to June 1999, as a result of barbaric missile and bomb attacks by the armed forces of NATO member States on civilian infrastructure, including transportation and energy facilities, as well as on industrial enterprises, more than two thousand Yugoslav civilians, among them dozens of children, were killed. 2,300 cruise missiles, 14,000 bombs were launched at a small sovereign nation in the center of Europe.
The troops of NATO member States massively used depleted uranium munitions, causing irreparable damage to the environment and increasing the number of cancer cases in the region. The scale of the ecological catastrophe is still beyond estimation.
The impunity of the strikes by NATO countries against Yugoslavia created the preconditions for new acts of force around the world under the guise of fighting ”for the values of freedom and democracy“. The conviction of the collective West that it is impeccable and has the right to decide the fate of other peoples and States led to the rise of the neo-Nazi regime in Ukraine, which, after the coup d'état in 2014, set out to implement a policy of genocide against the Russian population and unleash an armed conflict on the territory of that country.
The Chambers of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation appeal to the United Nations, international parliamentary organizations and the parliaments of foreign States to condemn the military operation by NATO countries against Yugoslavia, to counter attempts to distort the historical truth about the tragic events of 1999 in the interests of the collective West, and to take measures to bring States members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to international legal responsibility for the aggression against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.“
