What do the citizens of Serbia think about NATO and its cooperation, 19 years after bombing?

Citizens of Serbia believe that the policy of Slobodan Milošević is to blame for NATO bombing in 1999, as well as that the bombing could have been avoided. The support for NATO membership is 10% while 84% is against it. In spite of that, 26% believe that Serbia could have benefits by cooperating with NATO. The citizens have graded the relationship between Serbia and NATO with average grade 2.

Institute for European Affairs in cooperation with Ninamedia research house conducted a research of public opinion from March 16th to 20th about the relationship between Serbia and NATO. The research is done on representative sample from 1203 respondents. Topics of research were: the support of Serbia’s membership in NATO; reasons of bombing and accepting an apology; grade and benefit from Serbia-NATO cooperation.

The support for membership to NATO gives 10% of citizens, while 84% is against. Citizens of higher education are more in favour of membership in NATO. Citizens of Belgrade are least in favour of membership, which is more than double in the amount of citizens of southern and eastern Serbia.

When it comes to the reason of NATO bombing, the biggest number of citizens brings up the policy of Slobodan Milošević, while two-thirds of citizens believe that NATO bombing of Federal Republic of Yugoslavia could have been avoided, one-fifth has the opposite stance.

One-third of respondents would accept an apology from NATO because of the bombing, while 62% disagrees with that. Younger people are more in favour to accept an apology than older people.

Citizens grade the relationship of Serbia and NATO with the average sufficient grade: 2,01. Most of respondents gives the grade 1 (44,7%), after that goes the grade 3 (25,9%). The grade 5 gave the least respondents, only 3,6%.

When it comes to concrete cooperation and benefit from NATO, two-thirds of respondents is against any cooperation (66%), while 26% supports it. With the increase of degree of education, the amount of people who support cooperation also increases with the number of highly educated that support cooperation reaches up to 40%.

Detailed conclusions and results of research with the graphic view of data can be found on the web page of the Institute for European Affairs

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We are reminding that 19 years have passed since the bombing and that the responsibility of political elites is not yet determined for the policy of the 1990s which abused the institutions of the State in order to achieve nationalistic goal and to violate elementary human rights of its citizens. The institutions of the State have, 19 years of the bombing, still not identified even approximate number of victims of the bombing. With all the capacities and resources that State possesses, it is hard to believe that the State is not capable to identify by name and surname all the victims. Victims are being manipulated daily in political purposes and the number of victims varies from a few hundreds to couple of thousands.

During the bombing, according to data from Humanitarian Law Centre, for now the only reliable source, it was confirmed by name that in NATO bombing life had lost in total 758 people: 205 Serbs, 220 Albanians, 28 Roma people and other, 30 member of OVK and 275 member of VJ/MUP of Serbia. On the territory of Serbia, life had lost 260, in Montenegro 10 and in Kosovo 488 people.

Other research on stance of citizens on NATO: 2018, 2017, 2016.

Belgrade, 23.03.2018