New documentary by Sladjana Zaric,
RTS – Serbia’s Radio and Television
March 26, 2026
Those who have followed TFF over the decades will remember that we were engaged in conflict-mitigation in all parts of Yugoslavia from 1991 and beyond 2000. It is all to be found in our 2200-A4 pages equivalent online documentation, Yugoslavia – What Should Have Been Done? – which is unique for two reasons. First, it was written on the go, so to speak, and not years after it all happened. Not one comma has been changed, so everyone can see where, at the time, we were right and where we were wrong.
Secondly, it is a systematic documentation of the de-facto peace prevention conducted by NATO/EU countries that understood woefully little of the complexities of Yugoslavia, ignored international law – like when recognising Slovenia and Croatia out of Yugoslavia and thereby making the war in Bosnia unavoidable and when ruthlessly bombing Kosovo and Serbia without a UN mandate and making every peaceful solution to that conflict impossible and violated the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Yugoslavia.
We also criticised the Dayton Accords and predicted they would never bring true peace to Bosnia-Hercegovina.
I am happy also to also remind you that TFF was the first organisation to propose, in September 1991, that UN Peace-Keeping missions be deployed to the Krajina areas of Croatia – in September 1991. It turned out that former Secretary of State, Cyrus Vance – who was one of a handful together with Lord Carrington and a number of UN leaders who did understand the complexities of the region – was working at the same time on exactly that idea with the leadership in Belgrade and Zagreb. You’ll find TFF’s proposal for that in the report – embedded in “Yugoslavia – What Should Have Been Done?” called “After Yugoslavia – What?”
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Our conflict-mediation team spent 1995-1999 doing mediation in the conflict between the Kosovo-Albanians, who, under the nonviolent leadership of Dr Ibrahim Rugova wanted to secede from Serbia/Yugoslavia in which it had a wide-ranging autonomous status and become an independent state, on the one hand, and three governments in Belgrade, among them that of Milan Panic, and we also met with President Milosevic who took a serious interest in our independent work.
The report just mentioned contains, among many numerous other articles, the framework proposal in the shape of a legal document that could have secured a negotiation process in peace and towards peace. It was the only independent proposal that obtain widespread positive reaction in both the Serbia and tehe Kosovo-Albanian media.
NATO’s reckless bombing of course destroyed all those elements of a peaceful solution to the conflict. Instead of that, the West helped establish and arm a then-murky force behind the back of Dr Rugova called the Kosovo Liberation Army – KLA or UCK. It was the German intelligence service BND, CIA and other violence-promoting actors who built the KLA to become NATO’s ground troops and provide intelligence on the ground for NATO’s bombing.
The whole thing was sold to the world with arguments like Milosevic was Europe’s new Hitler (Bill Clinton), he was planning a genocide on the Albanians in Kosovo and this – none other, by the way – was a case where the newly invented concept of humanitarian intervention/The Responsibility To Protect – had to be use. None of us who were there and worked 24/7 believed a word of all these de facto lies.
Sadly, as series of intellectuals in both Eastern and Western Europe believed this fake and omission, and the black-and-whiting if everything into the simplifying Serbs as only bad guys and everybody else as only good guys.
This was also the war in which the marketing of simplifying narratives and sophisticated media warfare became systematic and powerful. However, contrary to today’s wars and genocides, there were cracks in the media walls where experts like those in TFF’s conflict-mitigation team could get through to media like CNN, public service media in Scandinavia, German and many other media with view from on the ground. This ended 100% with the – failed – regime-change attempt by the US/NATO in Syria and the liberation of Aleppo in December 2016 from 4,5 years of terrorist occupation.
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I have just returned from Belgrade, where I participated in the premiere of a very important and revealing new documentary that was shown to half a million viewers on RTS on March 24, 2026, the day that marked the 27th memorial anniversary of NATO’s first illegal, out-of-area bombing of a country and its capital. This documentary, excellently produced by Sladjana Zaric of RTS, is special in the sense that only foreigners participate in it (I am one of them).
In my view, it also reveals how much of what was done – allegedly to help Yugoslavia and preserve peace – was either ill-informed, ill-willed or simply a cynical use of the country’s crisis and dissolution processes for self-serving purposes, such a exploiting the weakness of Russia, getting the US Bondsteel Base in Kosovo, divide-and-rule by splitting up a confederation into smaller states that could later become NATO and/or EU members and – implicitly perhaps – to undermine the tremendous importance of the United Nations.
Tragically, Yugoslavia became a testbed for everything we have seen ever since. In this sense, as I argued at the time, much more important to world history than the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Since 1999, NATO has been a criminal organisation in the sense that this operation had no UN mandate, and it was a clear violation of NATO’s own Treaty, which is a copy of the UN Charter, advocates purely defensive help to other members if they are attacked and states that disputes shall be transferred to the UN. As I have argued ever since, NATO had nothing to do anywhere in former Yugoslavia or in any other place we’ve seen it, including for instance Libya and Ukraine.
And it is certainly only defensive in its treaty words, not in what it does. The word “defensive” is nothing but propaganda since it also builds on the concept of offensive deterrence both in its conventional sphere and as a nuclear weapons- and first-use-based construct.
Some of the readers may remember that RTS’s building was bombed and 16 media staff were killed on the spot. This is what it looks like today:
And here follow some images from the press conference at the RTS Club, the morning news studio, Sladjana Zaric with images of a couple of the 32 RTS documentaries – or films as she calls them – that she has produced over 20 years, and a peep into one of RTS’s offices.
And here is the documentary that – it goes without saying – that I recommend that you see and reflect a bit on. My own thought at seeing it is this is that – in spite of today’s instant communication – perhaps it does take about a quarter of a century before the lies and propaganda are revealed and at least some elements of the larger truth begin to surface.
My thoughts on this video, therefore, also go to the victims in Venezuela, in Gaza and in Iran these very days. I wish it shall not take that long for people to recognise that they are being fed with narratives, fake and propaganda, to cover up for systematic international law violations and bestial cruelty by the US and Israel.
One Response
I remember Milosevic, who was not guilty of any crime, saying that a breakaway part of the country wanted 35% of the country but only represented 15% of the population and the land they were after was the richest part of the country. He was not being unreasonable merely pointing out the facts. Furthermore he was not whipping up violence but dialogue with the murderous NATO members. I did not, then, understand how NATO could justify their presence, but came to understand later, there was never any justification and it was all about balkanisation and nothing to do with “humanitarian intervention/The Responsibility To Protect”. So thank you for this article, much appreciated.