Serbian President Compares Russia's Attack on Ukraine to Bombing of Yugoslavia

Aleksandar Vučić, President of the Republic of Serbia, has said that Russian President Vladimir Putin has used the same narratives and explanations for his attack on Ukraine as NATO countries did when they launched their military operation against Yugoslavia.

"For the first time, unprecedented in world history, the most powerful 19 countries made a decision, without involvement of the UN Security Council, I repeat, without any decision by the UN Security Council, to brutally attack and punish a sovereign country on the European soil, as they had said, to prevent a humanitarian disaster.

They did not laugh out loud when the Russian president used the very same words justifying his attack against Ukraine. They forgot that they themselves had used the same narrative, the same words and the same explanations," said Aleksandar Vučić during the general debate of the 78th session of the UN General Assembly in New York on 21 September, asUkrinform reports.

Aleksandar Vučić said that Serbia "do support it and will keep supporting" Ukraine's territorial integrity, "because we do not change our politics, we do not change our principles, regardless of centuries-long traditional friendship with the Russian Federation".

"To us, every violence is the same, any violation of the UN Charter is the same, regardless of the strength of the power that exerts it or the inevitably similar excuses made for it illegal and immoral behaviour," the Serbian leader said.

The International Court of Justice has recognised that the Serbian authorities have carried out a systematic practice of ethnic crimes and cleansing against Kosovars living in their own region. And the "ethnic cleansing" and systemic crimes of the "Kyiv regime" referred to by the Russian president exist only in the fantasies of Russian propaganda.

Earlier, Vučić expressed his disbelief that the European Union was moving much faster in granting membership to Ukraine than to his country.

He also stated that if Ukraine recognises Kosovo's independence, "it will lose everything in one day".