"The NATO bombing, modern savagery and terrorism, hidden under a false mask of humanity, could not break us. We will never renounce Kosovo and Metohija, our holy land. We will always respond to the aggressor's attack with full force, with pride, as befits the preservation of dignity, identity and sovereignty," Popovic said.
Tuesday's 27th anniversary observances opened with wreaths laid at the Tasmajdan Park monument to three-year-old Milica Rakic, depicting a girl and a black butterfly as a tribute to all child victims of the NATO strikes. "We were just children," reads the inscription on the stone butterfly wings. An evening state ceremony honoring the bombing's victims is planned in the southern city of Vranje.
NATO's military operation against Yugoslavia was undertaken without the approval of the UN Security Council, based on Western countries' claims that the republic's authorities had allegedly carried out ethnic cleansing in the Kosovo autonomy, and provoked a humanitarian catastrophe there.