Anti-NATO Rally in Belgrade Starts With Moment of Silence for Moscow Terror Attack Victims

BELGRADE (Sputnik) - A rally marking the 25th anniversary of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in Belgrade began with a minute of silence in memory of the victims of the terrorist attack in Russia, a Sputnik correspondent reported.

The demonstration took place on Sunday afternoon at the Eternal Flame memorial dedicated to the military and civilian casualties of the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, which at the time included Serbia and Montenegro.

Despite the cold and rainy weather, rally participants brought Serbian and red flags along with signs condemning NATO's aggression. The demonstration was attended by Russian Ambassador to Serbia Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko, Deputy Chair of Russia's Federation Council Defense Committee Vladimir Chizhov and delegates of the Cuban Embassy in Serbia. Representatives of European left-wing organizations also took part in the rally, carrying Greek and Palestinian flags.

"They [the West] demand from us the unthinkable — to recognize the independence of Kosovo, to renounce the Republika Srpska of Bosnia and Herzegovina and to impose sanctions against Russia, but they do not ask us to forgive them for killing our children ... All they can get from us is contempt," Aleksandar Vulin, the leader of Serbia's Movement of Socialists and former head of the Security Intelligence Agency, said after the moment of silence.

Before the rally, its organizers from the New Communist Party of Yugoslavia made a request to relight the flame at the memorial, which was extinguished when the government of then-Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was overthrown in October 2000.

The memorial was unveiled in June 2000 in the presence of the leadership of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The monument consists of a 30-meter-tall (98-foot-tall) pedestal standing on the bank of the Danube River with a torch on top that spewed a flame three meters into the air.

After Milosevic was removed from power on October 5, 2000, the memorial was vandalized and the gas flow to the torch was cut off. Restoration works at the monument and around it were launched in 2009, on the initiative of the Serbian Generals and Admirals Club.

In 1999, an armed confrontation between Albanian separatists from the Kosovo Liberation Army and the Serbian army led to a bombing of what was then the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, consisting of Serbia and Montenegro, by NATO forces. The operation was undertaken without the approval of the UN Security Council and was based on allegations by Western countries that the Yugoslav authorities were allegedly carrying out ethnic cleansing of Kosovo Albanians.

NATO airstrikes continued from March 24 to June 10, 1999 and claimed the lives of over 2,500 people, including 87 children.