Exactly 20 years ago today, NATO launched its major offensive against Yugoslavia (probably what was left of it after the independence of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and North Macedonia.
"NATO is launching bombing raids against Yugoslavia because the latter refuses to sign the agreement on the future of Kosovo. The airstrikes will last three months, until Yugoslav forces withdraw from the area. It is the first attack in the history of the Alliance against a sovereign state".
And not only that. It was the first air attack on European soil since the end of the Second World War, and in a country a stone's throw from Greece's northern border.
In the said bombings, the NATO forces, mainly American, used bombs of the latest - for the time - technology of depleted uranium, mainly hitting infrastructures of strategic importance of the Yugoslav state.
The coup, which took place in the penultimate year of Bill Clinton's term as president of the USA, caused a very large popular reaction in Greece which was mainly expressed in rallies and concerts in favor of the Yugoslav people.
In fact, the AEK football team, in a bold move, showed up in Belgrade in the middle of the bombings and played a friendly game with a purely anti-war character against Partizan.
The bombing continued until an agreement was reached, which led to the withdrawal of Yugoslav armed forces from Kosovo and the creation of the United Nations Interim Administration in Kosovo (UNMIK), a UN peacekeeping mission in Kosovo.
The blood toll for Slobodan Milosevic's Yugoslavia was heavy with 3600 dead, mostly civilians but also soldiers and police. The economic destruction of the Yugoslav state amounted to a staggering 30 billion dollars (at 1999 prices).