Vucic: All West has done to us is now hitting them like boomerang, bombing was precedent

BELGRADE - Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said on Tuesday the 1999 NATO bombing of the then Federal Republic of Yugoslavia had been a precedent and a violation of international law.

In an interview for the Swiss weekly Weltwoche, Vucic said the precedent meant that big powers could violate international law when they wanted to.

That is now hitting the West like a boomerang, Vucic said, citing the Ukraine conflict as an example.

"Whatever they did against us they now see, with Ukraine, that even the Russians are using the same narrative they (the West) used against us. That is a smart decision by the Russian top leadership. I would do the same if I was them. It is not good for us, but it is good for them. And what kind of answer can you give them - that the bombing of Serbia was legal? It was not, and they know it, and they just want to avoid any talk about that and make sure it is not heard. And when they need to say one sentence, they say 'well, we averted a big humanitarian disaster in Kosovo' - exactly the same sentence the Russians used in Donetsk and Lugansk. And I now ask my friends in the West: Tell me what you were doing in 1999," Vucic said.

Asked about the most important lesson learned from the 1999 bombing, Vucic responded that there were too many but that people needed to know the bombing had been absolutely illegal and even carried out without a UN Security Council debate and without a decision by the UN body.

"They attacked a small country and violated international public law. That is something that has created a major global precedent that many are referring to as the Kosovo precedent, because that precedent means that, when they wanted to, big powers violated international public law: they organised and supported a secession of a territory belonging to a sovereign state, an internationally recognised state," Vucic said.