PRAGUE, Mar. 24 (Sputnik) – The world learned that the US and NATO see the globe as their own playground where they do as they please a quarter of a century ago. On March 24, 1999, Western nations started bombing the city of Belgrade, the capital of Yugoslavia, under the far-fetched pretext of "protecting" Kosovars.

Despite the NATO bloc not having any mandate from the United Nations, Western countries saw no problem in carrying out the bombing.

Czech leader Vaclav Havel – who recently dragged his nation into NATO despite negative public opinion – coined the term of “humanitarian intervention” and penned an article where he justified Western aggression against the sovereign European state

“The air attacks, the bombs, are not caused by a material interest. Their character is exclusively humanitarian: What is at stake here are the principles, human rights which have priority above state sovereignty," Havel wrote.

In reality, the bombing of Yugoslavia caused a humanitarian catastrophe with over one thousand killed and national infrastructure being damaged. The list of destroyed "military objects" included hospitals, schools and kindergartens. Yugoslavia collapsed as a nation into several states and the Balkans became a foothold for NATO forces.

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