MOSCOW, March 24. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin described the events of 1999, when Yugoslavia was bombed by NATO troops, as a huge tragedy.

"It’s a huge tragedy!" he said in the documentary film "Belgrade" by TASS General Director Andrey Kondrashov. A fragment from the film was shown on the Rossiya-1 TV channel during the News of the Week program.

The Russian leader reiterated that "what the West did was completely unacceptable."

He recalled that he had said many times that in fact, they simply unleashed a war in the heart of Europe, without any resolution of the UN Security Council.

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.