BELGRADE, March 22. /TASS/. NATO is responsible for all the terrible conflicts of recent times, it is now acting in the Ukrainian conflict in the same way as it did in Yugoslavia in 1999, Yevgeny Primakov, CEO of the Federal Agency for the Commonwealth of Independent States Affairs, Compatriots Living Abroad, and International Humanitarian Cooperation, told reporters.

"NATO and the Western world are behind all the conflicts of recent times, the most terrible ones - I mean, of course, Iraq and Libya, and the way the Americans pushed Georgia into a conflict with Russia, and what is happening in Ukraine - we see everywhere their ominous figure, which is always behind or even in the foreground of all these conflicts," Primakov said at a conference in Belgrade dedicated to the 25th anniversary of NATO's aggression against Yugoslavia.

According to him, humanity is now facing the consequences of the fact that NATO "considered itself unpunished and omnipotent." The CEO opined that the alliance’s actions in the Ukrainian conflict are born of a complete lack of "fear of war."

"They have lost all fear of war, and if Russia, which was restoring constitutional order in the North Caucasus, still could not be bombed, now they have realized that it is still impossible to bomb it, but it is quite possible to fight against Russia with the hands of the Ukrainians, by supplying weapons or, as [French President Emmanuel] Macron says, even sending someone there," he said.

Moscow now sees obvious parallels between the events of 1999 in Yugoslavia and the current situation on the Russian-Ukrainian border, Primakov said.

"The attitude of the Serbs to the events of 1999 is now officially such that they can't forgive it, or rather, they can't forget it, but they can forgive it... The situation in Serbia in 1999 resonated painfully in our Russian hearts, but when we see what is happening now to our people in this very Donetsk, Belgorod, Lugansk, Zaporozhye, Kherson, Crimea, [we realize that] we can neither forget nor forgive," the agency's CEO concluded.

NATO bombing

NATO launched a military operation against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia on March 24, 1999. The bloc’s leadership claimed that the main goal of Operation Allied Force was to prevent genocide against the Albanian population of Kosovo. According to NATO’s data, aircraft from the alliance’s member states carried out 38,000 sorties during the 78-day operation.

Military experts say, citing research, that 3,000 cruise missiles were fired and about 80,000 tons of bombs were dropped, including cluster and depleted uranium munitions. According to Serbian data, the bombardments killed 3,500 to 4,000 people and injured some 12,500, two thirds of them civilians. Serbian experts point out that 15 tons of depleted uranium was dropped on Serbia in the three months of bombing. After that, the country ranked first in Europe in cancer cases. About 30,000 new cancer cases were registered in the first ten years after the bombardments, and 10,000 to 18,000 patients died. Economic damage amounted to $100 billion.