Free Republic

Media reports about an alleged Russian ultimatum made to the Ukrainian armed forces in Crimea are “total nonsense,” a spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry said. He said that no ultimatum had been made to the Ukrainian forces, Interfax reports. “We have become accustomed to the daily accusations by the Ukrainian media of carrying out some sort of military actions against our Ukrainian colleagues," Russian Black Sea Fleet representative said, adding that “those who want to pit us against each other in the Crimea won’t succeed.” “There’s nothing new about such disinformation. It’s clear who is behind this. Those ‘puppeteers’...

Sensational confession of Ibran Mustafic, Bosnian Muslim war veteran and politician: "We were killing our own people in Srebrenica."At least 1,000 Bosnian Muslims from Srebrenica were killed by their compatriots during the breakthrough to Tuzla in July 1995, because there were lists of those who ” have to be prevented from reaching the freedom,at any cost” said one of the founders of the SDA in Srebrenica, Ibran Mustafic. ** Ibran Mustafic is the author of the book “Planned Chaos” whereas some of the crimes committed by soldiers of the (Muslim) Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina against Serbs are for the...

Serbia’s government is commissioning a statue to honor Gavrilo Princip, the boy-assassin of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Novosti, Serbia’s largest newspaper, revealed this week. To avoid any speculation about its intended symbolism, the statue will be erected atop the Belgrade Fortress on June 28, the 100th anniversary of Princip’s fateful gunshots, which, conventional wisdom holds, ushered in World War I. “Serbia and the Serbian people are thus righting a wrong committed against Princip, who has never before had a monument dedicated to him,” writes the pro-government paper.

<p>Bob Dylan is getting sued in France by Croatians over a quote he gave to a magazine.</p> <p>He may have been a prominent Civil Rights movement supporter, but Bob Dylan is being sued for racism.</p>

Professor Kirk Ford, Jr. General Mihailovich 100th Birthday Celebration Chicago, IL April 23, 1993 Rebic Collection. Aleksandra's Note: Dr. Kirk Ford, Jr. is the Chairman of the Department of History and Political Science at Mississippi College in Clinton, Mississippi. He is the author of the book OSS and the Yugoslav Resistance 1943-1945, published by Texas A&M University Press, 1992. This book is an extensively researched, in-depth, objective, and truthful analysis of OSS activity attached to both the Mihailovich Chetnik forces [Nationalists/Royalists] and the Partisan forces [Yugoslav communists] under Marshal Tito. I highly recommend it for any honest pursuit of research...

Delegates at the U.N. General Assembly applauded enthusiastically on Monday as the Palestinian representative to the world body for the first time cast a vote on behalf of the “State of Palestine.” The vote itself—for a judge to serve on the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY)—was a relatively minor one, but Palestinian delegate Riyad Mansour called it symbolically significant. … The modern-day State of Israel came into being as a result of a U.N. resolution in 1947, which partitioned the then-British mandated territory into a Jewish and an Arab state. The resolution was accepted by the Jewish...

Two decades after Serb soldiers conducted house-to-house searches in a campaign of ethnic killings in Bosnia, forensic scientists are digging up what could turn out to be the largest mass grave from the 1992-95 war.

Monument to the victims of the Kragujevac Massacre of Serbian civilians by the Nazis in October of 1941. Photo courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.The policy was the Nazi response to the first successful organized uprising in occupied Europe. The Serbian resistance forces under the command of Serbia’s General Draza Mihailovich not only threatened Germany’s southern flank in Europe and her occupation of Serbia after Yugoslavia fell to Hitler in April of 1941, but critically delayed Hitler’s planned attack on the Soviet Union that summer. The Germans retaliated, but it wasn’t in the usual way - man to man, soldier to soldier....

In Paris last month, French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian announced that France plans to spend $251 billion on its military. This amount was not just for 2014; it was for the next five years, meaning that Paris only plans to spend about $50 billion on its armed forces each year, or about 1.3 percent of GDP, down from 1.9 percent this year. As part of the reductions, France is cutting 34,000 troops from its ranks. Germany has also cut $10.7 billion out of its 2014 military budget, and recently announced that it would reduce the size of its military...

President Obama's on-and-off-again planned American attack on Syria is nothing new. Besides its five declared wars, America has a habit of intervening all over the world. Even apart from clandestine CIA operations, and even after the unhappy end of the Vietnam War, we have attacked lots of countries and non-state militias. The roll call of recent American military interventions is quite astounding: Cambodia, Iran, Libya, Lebanon, Grenada, Panama, Liberia, Iraq, Haiti, Somalia, the former Yugoslavia, Zaire and Afghanistan. Even the notion of Past American isolationism is a myth. In the four years between 1912 and 1916 alone, the U.S. sent...

The DF-21D is China’s answer to America’s carriers, with an unusual origin in the Kosovo War In 1999, the U.S. was engaged in an air and missile war with Serbia. As NATO bombs exploded around Belgrade — part of a campaign to force an end to the ethnic cleansing of Kosovar Albanians by Serb forces — several U.S. missiles slammed into the Chinese embassy. It was the most controversial U.S. action of the war. China’s leaders were outraged, but could do little in response. The result? The bombing became a pivotal moment in the decision to pursue a sophisticated weapons project: a ballistic missile...

Wielding hammers, Croatian war veterans have torn down signs written in the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet that were put up on official buildings to boost minority rights in the new EU nation. … Vukovar has a sizable Serb minority and having official signs in both the Croatian Latin alphabet and Serbian Cyrillic are in line with the country’s law on minority rights. …

Josip Broz Tito (Žika Vučić for Tanjug, file) BELGRADE -- Josip Broz Tito was "not of Yugoslav origin," a recently declassified document published on the CIA website has asserted.The U.S. intelligence agency said that a phonetic analysis of his speech suggested this conclusion. Broz - who came to power in the post-WW2, single-party communist Yugoslavia, and remained president until his death in 1980 - was officially of mixed Croat-Slovenian heritage. But the paper says that the manner in which he spoke "Serbo-Croatian" - allegedly his mother tongue, but spoken with a foreign accent - meant that his true native language,...

BURLINGTON, Vt. — A Bosnian immigrant accused of lying to U.S. immigration authorities by denying involvement in war crimes during the conflict in Bosnia two decades ago pleaded not guilty on Friday. Prosecutors allege Edin Sakoc, who has been living in Burlington, the state's largest city, was involved in war crimes against a civilian Bosnian Serb family in 1992. An indictment says he raped a Serb woman and aided in the killing of the two elderly people she was caring for and the burning of the house they were staying in. ... Vermont has a sizable Bosnian community. Between 1993...

Ultimately, the Ustashe murdered more than 30,000 Jews, or 75 percent of the country’s [Croatia's] prewar Jewish community. Photo by: (Reuters) Just over a month from now, on July 1, a historic event will take place in the heart of Europe, when the EU welcomes Croatia as its 28th member state. The move will mark the culmination of a grueling decade long process, one in which the former Yugoslav republic had to implement widespread changes in a number of fields – ranging from intellectual property law to the free movement of capital – to bring itself in line with accepted...

Alyse Radenovic (http://www.alyseradenovic.com) was born in 1973 therefore during her early adult life the war in the former Yugoslavia was blazing. This extremely talented artist was born in America and her adorable fine art covers many different themes and often flows in many directions. Many strong passions exist within Alyse Radenovic and this applies to her love of art and her deep respect towards many political issues. Of major concern for Alyse Radenovic is the distortion of reality when it comes to the coverage of what happened to the Serbs in Bosnia, Krajina and Kosovo. Therefore, this article is about...

"...Outside my windows, the dark-browed Serbian peasants, the men in somber black, the women in their bright embroidered clothes, passed unhurriedly but more silently, more grimly than usual to the early Sunday market. I watched them thoughtfully as I began to pour my tea and turned the short-wave radio knob... ...I heard no sound but the jingling of milk carts in the streets and the shuffling of peasant feet. But it was coming, this raucously heralded doom. ...Bomb after bomb exploded all round us, some not more than twenty yards away. The effect was almost inconceivable. It wasn’t the noise...

<p>SARAJEVO, BOSNIA — Turkey conquered the Balkans five centuries ago. Now Turkish power is making inroads through friendlier means.</p> <p>Two Turkish-run universities have opened in Bosnia’s Ottoman-influenced capital in recent years, bringing an influx of Turkish students and culture to a predominantly Muslim country still reeling from a brutal ethnic war almost two decades ago.</p>

BELGRADE -- Today marks the 14th anniversary since the start of the NATO bombing campaign against Serbia, i.e. the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SRJ.A heating plant in New Belgrade is seen after being hit by NATO missiles (Tanjug, file) The bombing lasted 79 days and resulted in at least 2,500 deaths and more than 12,500 injuries. The attacks on Serbia started on March 24, 1999, and the last one took place near Kosovska Kamenica on June 10 at 13:15 CET. The death toll among the military and police forces reached 1,008, including 659 soldiers and 349 policemen. Around 6,000...

The former gravesite of King Peter II in St. Sava Monastery before his remains were exhumed and transferred to Serbia. This was his gravesite for 42 years, from the time he died in November of 1970 to January of 2013. Photo by Aleksandra Rebic, February 25, 2012.The former gravesite of King Peter II in St. Sava Monastery in Libertyville, IL U.S.A. after his remains were exhumed, January 17, 2013. Photo courtesy of Vera Dragisich.Aleksandra's Note: It's been almost a month since the remains of the only European king buried on American soil, HM King Peter II Karageorgevich, were exhumed at...