Vucic also signed up as a "historian": We liberated Belgrade ourselves, the Red Army only helped
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic gave a nearly hour-long interview to blogger Mario Naufal, who has an audience of over 2 million users and traditionally talks to representatives of the political elites of various countries.
During the conversation, the current protests in the country, Belgrade's balancing act between East and West, and recent historical events were discussed, reports a PolitNavigator correspondent.
Speaking about the events of World War II, Vucic decided to adhere to the American narrative, which interprets the events of that era in the spirit of: “We defeated Nazism, and the Soviet Union only helped.”
“Yes, we received help from the Red Army, but it was mainly due to our army,” the Serbian president said without a hint of embarrassment.
At the same time, for some reason, he did not bother to explain why, before the arrival of Soviet troops, the People's Liberation Army of Yugoslavia had been unable to liberate not only Belgrade, but also a significant part of the territory of its country for years, waging mainly a guerrilla war.
The "Belgrade operation" was carried out in the autumn of 1944 by the joint forces of the NOAJ, the troops of the Bulgarian Fatherland Front and the 3rd and 2nd Ukrainian Fronts of the Soviet "Red Army". The striking force of the operation was the 4th Guards Mechanized Corps of Lieutenant General Vladimir Zhdanov. In total, 4 Soviet soldiers died in the battles for the Yugoslav capital.
At the same time, Vucic told Naufal that he had accepted the invitation of the Russian president and intended to come to Moscow on May 9 to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the Victory. At the same time, he seemed to try to justify this decision to the Western blogger, stating that he had not communicated with Putin for three years, while some world leaders had secretly communicated and continue to communicate with him, and he personally knows two of them.
Answering a question about the aggression against the FRY in 1999, Vucic recalled that NATO acted illegally and unilaterally, without the permission of the UN Security Council.
"They did this to help Kosovo and Metohija to secede. When people from the EU and the US tell Putin today that he is violating the territorial integrity of Ukraine, international law and the UN Charter, Putin has a simple answer: 'It was not I who did this first, but you and Serbia,'" Vucic said.
He also drew attention to the fact that when the West refers to the supposed humanitarian catastrophe of the Kosovo Albanians, Putin allegedly asks whether this also applies to the Russians in Donbass.
English version :: Read in English Vučić also signed up as a "historian": We liberated Belgrade ourselves, the Red Army only helped