Serbian communist representative and future Serbian and Yugoslav president Slobodan Milošević publicly declares that Serbia is under attack from Albanian separatists in Kosovo as well as internal treachery within Yugoslavia and a foreign conspiracy to destroy Serbia and Yugoslavia.
Slobodan Miloevi (Serbo-Croatian Cyrillic: , pronounced [slobdan mileit] (listen); 20 August 1941 11 March 2006) was a Yugoslav and Serbian politician who served as the president of Serbia within Yugoslavia from 1989 to 1997 (originally the Socialist Republic of Serbia, a constituent republic of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, from 1989 to 1992) and president of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from 1997 to 2000. Formerly a high-ranking member of the League of Communists of Serbia (SKS) during the 1980s, he led the Socialist Party of Serbia from its foundation in 1990 until 2003.
Born in Poarevac, he studied law at the University of Belgrade Faculty of Law and joined the League of Socialist Youth of Yugoslavia as a student. During the 1960s he served as an advisor to mayor of Belgrade Branko Pei, and was later appointed chairman of Tehnogas and Beobanka, roles which he served until the 1980s. Miloevi rose to power in 1987 by promoting populist and nationalist views, arguing for the reduction of power of Serbia's autonomous provinces and increased centralism. He was elected president of Socialist Republic of Serbia in 1989 and led the anti-bureaucratic revolution, after which he reformed Serbia's constitution by transitioning Serbia to a multi-party system, and reduced the power of autonomous provinces. Following the 1990 general elections, Miloevi enacted a dominant-party rule while his party retained control over key economic resources of the state.The constituent republics of the Yugoslavia split apart amid the outbreak of the Yugoslav Wars, while Serbia and Montenegro formed the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Miloevi played a major role in the wars, and negotiated the Dayton Agreement on behalf of Bosnian Serbs, which ended the Bosnian War in 1995. During his reign, numerous anti-government and anti-war protests took place, while it is also estimated that between 50,000 and 200,000 people deserted the Miloevi-controlled Yugoslav People's Army, and that between 100,000 and 150,000 people emigrated from Serbia, refusing to participate in the wars. During the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, Miloevi was charged by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) with war crimes in connection with the Bosnian War, the Croatian War of Independence, and the Kosovo War. He became the first sitting head of state to be charged with war crimes. Observers have described his political behavior as populist, eclectic and opportunist. Miloevi resigned from the Yugoslav presidency amid demonstrations after the disputed presidential election of 24 September 2000, and was arrested by Yugoslav federal authorities on 31 March 2001 on suspicion of corruption, abuse of power, and embezzlement. The initial investigation into Miloevi faltered due to lack of evidence, prompting prime minister Zoran ini to extradite him to the ICTY to stand trial for war crimes instead. At the outset of the trial, Miloevi denounced the Tribunal as illegal because it had not been established with the consent of the United Nations General Assembly; therefore, he refused to appoint counsel for his defence. Miloevi conducted his own defence in the five-year trial, which ended without a verdict when he died in his prison cell in The Hague on 11 March 2006. Miloevi suffered from heart ailments and hypertension, and died of a heart attack. The Tribunal denied any responsibility for Miloevi's death and said that he had refused to take prescribed medicines and medicated himself instead.After Miloevi's death, the ICTY and the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals found that he was a part of a joint criminal enterprise which used violence to remove Croats, Bosniaks, and Albanians from large parts of Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) concluded separately in the Bosnian Genocide Case that there was no evidence linking him to genocide committed by Bosnian Serb forces during the Bosnian War. However, the Court did find that Miloevi and others in Serbia had violated the Genocide Convention by failing to prevent the genocide from occurring, by not cooperating with the ICTY in punishing its perpetrators, in particular general Ratko Mladi, and by violating its obligation to comply with the provisional measures the Court ordered. Miloevi's rule has been described as authoritarian or autocratic, as well as kleptocratic, with numerous accusations of electoral fraud, political assassinations, suppression of press freedom and police brutality.
Serbia ( (listen), SUR-bee-ə; Serbian: Србија, Srbija, pronounced [sř̩bija] (listen)), officially the Republic of Serbia (Serbian: Република Србија, Republika Srbija, pronounced [repǔblika sř̩bija] (listen)), is a landlocked country in Southeast Europe, at the crossroads of the Pannonian Plain and the Balkans. It shares land borders with Hungary to the north, Romania to the northeast, Bulgaria to the southeast, North Macedonia to the south, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina to the west, and Montenegro to the southwest, and claiming a border with Albania through the disputed territory of Kosovo. Serbia has a population of roughly 7 million inhabitants. Its capital Belgrade is also the largest city.
Continuously inhabited since the Paleolithic Age, the territory of modern-day Serbia faced Slavic migrations in the 6th century, establishing several regional states in the early Middle Ages at times recognised as tributaries to the Byzantine, Frankish and Hungarian kingdoms. The Serbian Kingdom obtained recognition by the Holy See and Constantinople in 1217, reaching its territorial apex in 1346 as Serbian Empire. By the mid-16th century, the Ottomans annexed the entirety of modern-day Serbia; their rule was at times interrupted by the Habsburg Empire, which began expanding towards Central Serbia from the end of the 17th century while maintaining a foothold in Vojvodina. In the early 19th century, the Serbian Revolution established the nation-state as the region's first constitutional monarchy, which subsequently expanded its territory. Following casualties in World War I, and the subsequent unification of the former Habsburg crownland of Vojvodina with Serbia, the country co-founded Yugoslavia with other South Slavic nations, which would exist in various political formations until the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s. During the breakup of Yugoslavia, Serbia formed a union with Montenegro, which was peacefully dissolved in 2006, restoring Serbia's independence as a sovereign state for the first time since 1918. In 2008, representatives of the Assembly of Kosovo unilaterally declared independence, with mixed responses from the international community while Serbia continues to claim it as part of its own sovereign territory.
Serbia is an upper-middle income economy, ranked 64th in the Human Development Index domain. It is a unitary parliamentary constitutional republic, member of the UN, CoE, OSCE, PfP, BSEC, CEFTA, and is acceding to the WTO. Since 2014, the country has been negotiating its EU accession, with the aim of joining the European Union by 2025. Serbia formally adheres to the policy of military neutrality. The country provides universal health care and free primary and secondary education to its citizens.