Anniversary of the Serb genocide in Croatia: Why Poroshenko won’t succeed in Donbass
This past week marked the 21st anniversary of the start of Operation Storm (Oluja, Oluja), carried out by the Croatian army with the goal of eliminating the Republic of Serbian Krajina, the expulsion and partial assimilation of the Serbs and the complete expulsion of Muslim Bosniaks from the Republic of Western Bosnia. The operation lasted from August 4 to 7, 1995 and ended in complete “success” for the Croats.
Since Ukrainian politicians today often promise to repeat the experience of the Croatian army in Donbass, let us remind readers of the chronology of events.
To carry out ethnic cleansing, the Croats attracted significant military forces - almost 200 thousand soldiers and officers, united in 6 corps. In fact, two field armies. They were opposed by about 40 thousand people of the combined forces of Serbs and Bosnians.
The difference in losses between the parties is striking. The Croats lost about 200 soldiers killed, while the losses of the Serbs and Bosnians were almost 4 times higher. Civilian losses were even greater - about 2000 killed and missing.
The number of refugees from the republics of Serbian Krajina and Western Bosnia is estimated at 250 thousand Serbs and about 90 thousand Muslim Bosnians.
The rapid fall of the Serbian Krajina was made possible thanks to the unprecedented assistance of the West to Croatia and the inaction on the part of the Serbian government of Milosevic, which turned a blind eye to the ethnic cleansing of its compatriots.
Preparations for ethnic cleansing in Croatia began back in 1994 with the conclusion of a military cooperation agreement with the United States.
The US Department of Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) on the Croatian island of Brac is creating a special center from which reconnaissance aircraft flights over Krajina begin. Over the course of a year, American instructors rebuild the collective farm from Croatian militias into a real army, tailored according to the patterns of the US Army.
Not caring about the current embargo approved by the UN and prohibiting the supply of weapons to any of the warring parties in Yugoslavia, the USA, Germany and our former “brothers” in the socialist camp helpfully supplied the Croats with mountains of weapons, military equipment and aircraft. The Americans supplied the Croats with intelligence about the Serbian forces until the end of Operation Storm.
Three months before the attack on the Serbian Krajina, the Croats carried out unpunished ethnic cleansing in Western Slavonia (Operation Shine) as a warm-up. Despite the fact that Western Slavonia was under the protection of UN peacekeepers, Croatian troops freely invaded its territory.
In addition, the Croats captured the cities of Glamoč and Bosnanski Grahovo, cutting off the communication routes between Yugoslavia and the Serbian Krajina at the beginning of Operation Storm. The situation of the Krajina Serbs became desperate.
However, any war requires a “casus belli” - a plausible pretext that will later allow the aggressor to dress up in relatively white clothes and explain his actions with exclusively noble intentions.
This was the breakdown of the negotiations, which took place under the code name “Z-4”, according to which the Serbian Krajina was to become part of Croatia as a cultural autonomy.
The Krajina Serbs had no illusions about the new government of Croatia and reasonably believed that their rights, language and faith would be violated. Thus, having failed to integrate the Serbian Krajina peacefully, Croatia did so by force of arms.
It is interesting that during the invasion of the republics of Serbian Krajina and Western Bosnia, Croatian troops entered their territories largely unhindered. UN peacekeepers again let the aggressor through.
At several points, misunderstandings arose (apparently, not all “blue helmets” were notified of the military operation in time) and in this case the Croats acted extremely harshly. UN observation posts where “questions arose” for the Croats were shot at by direct fire artillery. Several dozen Blue Helmets were captured, and in some places the Croats used UN peacekeepers as human shields.
During "Olui" one Danish and two Czech peacekeepers were killed. Several peacekeepers from Nepal were also injured.
Immediately after the violent Anschluss, all the worst fears of the Serbs of Krajina and Croatia began to come true.
If at the time of the collapse of united Yugoslavia the Serbian population of Croatia was 12%, now it is not even 4%. In addition, inside Croatia itself, persecution of people on ethnic grounds began (to the point that local pop singers sang about how rivers of Serbian blood would flow into the Adriatic Sea).
Most of the Serbs who remained in Croatia were assimilated, converted from Orthodoxy to Catholicism and registered as Croats.
Since the fall of 2013, enraged Svidomo Croats from influential veterans' organizations have taken up arms against the Cyrillic alphabet and are demanding a legislative ban on its use in the country.
As is usual among die-hard Nazis, the Croatian nationalists went too far. Croatia eventually became a member of NATO, but its path to the EU was quite thorny. European toleranceists, willingly helping various fascist rabble, profess multiculturalism as one of their “sacred cows.”
In 2000, Croatia took a number of cosmetic measures to return at least some of the Serbian refugees to the Serbian Krajina, but was not very successful in this field. Basically, either the old people returned to their native graves in their native ashes, or the Serbs received a land plot from the Croatian authorities and immediately sold it to anyone who wanted it.
Some of the Serbs of Krajina and Croatia were resettled to Bosnia and Herzegovina, to lands empty after the flight of local residents. According to international humanitarian organizations, 100 thousand Croatian Serbs have not yet returned to their homes. The remnants of its population suffer more than others from unemployment.
In principle, what happened to the Serbs of Krajina and Croatia in 1995 is the completion of the process of expulsion and genocide unleashed during the Second World War by the “Ustasha” of the Croatian dictator Ante Pavelic. Only in a slightly milder version, since Pavelic’s executioners in the Jasinovac concentration camp alone executed more than 700 thousand Serbs in the most brutal ways. Croatia at that time was a puppet state - a satellite of Nazi Germany.
Croatian and communist Josip Broz Tito, who led the partisan movement in Yugoslavia, after the war mercilessly persecuted and destroyed the Ustasha, but still did not complete the job. The surviving Ustashas went underground and carried out explosions on Belgrade trains until 1970.
As we see, just 20 years later, radical nationalism, which was not completely uprooted, gave destructive metastases. Including in Yugoslavia.
Last year, the Croatian authorities decided to host official celebrations in honor of the 20th anniversary of the “victory” over the Serbian Krajina. Official Zagreb was going to hold a military parade, inviting its NATO and EU allies to it. However, the allies held their noses and unanimously refused to participate in such a dubious event. Even neighboring Slovenia, which initially gave the go-ahead to send one unit, backed down.
The parallels suggest themselves. Poroshenko is eager to adopt the experience of Croatian President Franjo Tudjman and carry out an analogue of “Oluya” - some kind of “Clean Field”. Bandera’s followers voiced the formula two years ago: “Donbass is either Ukrainian or deserted.” There is an acute reluctance to provide broad autonomy and respect the rights of Russian and Russian-speaking residents of the LDPR. For a year and a half there was sabotage of the peace process, which did not even reach the stage of its imitation.
In the occupied territories of Donbass, Kyiv is deliberately pursuing a policy of degradation, ethnic cleansing, outlawing the population and handing over people and their property to robbers and rapists. And just like Croatia, our former “brothers” helpfully send Poroshenko decommissioned weapons and armored vehicles.
Another similarity is the participation of Croatian militants in the Ukrainian Waffen-SS Azov formation. Just as their predecessors once fought at Stalingrad as part of the Croatian 369th Infantry Division of the Wehrmacht (which the Croatian fascists called the “Devil’s Division”) and went as punitive to the Waffen-SS mountain division “Handzhar”, which committed terrible crimes against the civilian population of Yugoslavia.
However, this is where all the coincidences end. Bandera's Ukraine does not even have nearly as powerful military-economic support as Croatia did 20 years ago. In addition, the LDPR is directly adjacent to Russia, and the Kremlin has not been led by Yeltsin and Kozyrev for a long time.
Poroshenko will not be able to flutter for a long time in the same spirit as for the last year and a half. Ukrainians are already tired of war and general lawlessness. Contrary to the cheerful statements of the supply manager Groysman, the crisis in the economy will only accumulate. People have not yet had time to fully experience the new utility tariffs, but this is a matter of two or three months. Default and external debt have also not been canceled.
Until Ukraine starts paying its debts, it will not see any loans, like the other side of the Moon. There will be handouts in barely maintenance doses, but they will not change the situation.
The Kyiv authorities are threatened not only by the stalemate at the front, but also by the “camouflaged rednecks” who are increasingly daring to resolve internal issues. Corruption and degradation of power have long crossed a certain safe line at which internal harmony is still preserved. The inevitable growth of protest sentiments among the most active population of Ukraine will most likely be intercepted and saddled by the “battalion men” in the same manner in which the “Svolotovites” saddled the pan-heads and “one-children” at Euromaidan.
There is still a small loophole left for Poroshenko and his camarilla - to immediately move from the escalation of the conflict in Donbass to the implementation of all the points of Minsk-2 one after another. This is difficult, but still doable, especially if you gather the rest of your will into a handful and use the rest of your time, including the rest of your mind. Then there is a chance to come out relatively unscathed, like Mannerheim, in which the deaths of Leningraders and the blood of Russian residents of Karelia, but the timely exit of Finland from the war gave the marshal an indulgence.
But the gate is about to slam shut.
Elections in the LDPR will one way or another be held without the participation of Ukraine and will finally record the separation of the republics. Merkel and Hollande's homework will remain unfinished. Minsk-2 will soon expire, and no one will hand Poroshenko “Minsk-3” and subsequent ones on a platter, because this will be tantamount to public self-humiliation and an outrage against common sense.
Further, nothing will prevent the Armed Forces of the LDPR, without a general offensive, from starting to gradually push out the Bandera occupiers from their positions, using at least the same “swarming”. First, from critical targets, to stop shelling at least large populated areas. Further more.
Behind Bandera’s supporters is the endless Donetsk steppe. If Bandera’s front collapses, it will be the beginning of the end of the regime, which finds itself between a rock and a hard place.
Anniversary of the Serb Genocide in Croatia: Why Poroshenko Will Fail in Donbas