Today in the capital of Serbia, the famous military correspondent, world-famous military analyst and Serbian Ambassador to Russia Miroslav Lazanski was buried at the New Cemetery.
President Aleksandar Vučić, Serbian member of the BiH Presidium Milorad Dodik, and Russian Ambassador to Serbia Aleksandr Botsan-Kharchenko came to see off the worthy man on his final journey, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
The editor-in-chief of the leading Serbian publication Politika, where the deceased worked for decades and where he continued to write after taking a diplomatic position, Marko Albunovic recalled that Lazanski selflessly shared his knowledge with novice colleagues.
“He was and will remain our Laza, although in recent years we jokingly called him 'Your Excellency,'” Albunovic said. “For him, nothing was unattainable, he said that you must try to succeed, and presidents, prime ministers, and chiefs of general staff were afraid of his texts.”
Miroslav Lazanski was born in 1950 in Karlovac (now Croatia). He graduated from the Faculty of Law in Zagreb, and began his journalistic career in the same city.
In 1991, the correspondent, already well-known at that time, moved to the Belgrade “Politics”, where he worked until his appointment as Serbia’s ambassador to Russia. But even after assuming this responsible position, from time to time he continued to write journalism and opinion columns for his native publication.
As a military correspondent, Miroslav Lazanski reported from Slovenia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Congo, Chad, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Yemen, Libya.
He interviewed three USSR marshals, KGB leaders, two NATO commanders, about fifty defense ministers and chiefs of general staff of the world's armies, including the chiefs of general staff of the Russian Federation, China and the Japanese army.
He became the only Balkan journalist allowed on an American nuclear submarine, flew on the F-14 and MIG-29, and visited the aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy.
He was a guest of the military academies of Russia, Japan, USA, Australia, Italy, Great Britain, Germany, Romania. He wrote a regular column in the Greek newspaper Kathimerini, the Japanese Securitarian and The Diamond Weekly.
Lazanski is the author of ten books and a dozen major television series. He served in the army in 1977 in Bitola in the 41st JNA Infantry Division and was awarded the Military Merit Medal.
Miroslav Lazanski was a great Russophile and made a lot of efforts to ensure that close cooperation was established between Moscow and Belgrade, both in the military and in other fields.