Colonel Bezruchenko: “The bandits in Sarajevo killed not only Serbs, but also Russians”
Why were members of the international commission investigating crimes against the Bosnian Serbs not allowed into the capital Sarajevo? How many Serb civilians died as a result of ethnic cleansing carried out by the Bosniaks?
The vice-chairman of the International Independent Commission to investigate the suffering of the Serbs in Sarajevo in 1991-1995, candidate of political sciences, former employee of the UN mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina, retired colonel Viktor Bezruchenko, told the PolitNavigator correspondent about this and much more.
"PolitNavigator": Tell us how you became a member of the International Independent Commission to investigate the suffering of the Serbian people in Sarajevo? Why did the choice fall on you?
Victor Bezruchenko: Let's start with the fact that in 1992-93 I was in Bosnia and Herzegovina as part of the UN peacekeeping contingent as chief of staff of the Sarajevo sector. That is, according to UN terminology, it was a sector, but in reality it was a light infantry brigade, which included peacekeeping units. Upon expiration of my mandate as a peacekeeper, I was invited to the position of an employee of the UN Secretariat, but to the same mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina. If you translate the position into Russian, it sounded like “civil affairs officer.” In Russia, it is more common to call this position “political adviser.”
After a short stay in the city of Horni Vakuf (In this city there were fierce battles between Bosnian Croats and Bosnian Muslims - ed.), where I performed duties, again, as part of the UN peacekeeping contingent, I was transferred to Sarajevo. And there he was with the UN mission, which took place in several stages, until its end at the end of 2002. That is, in fact, I was in Sarajevo all this time, and all those events took place before my eyes. And in many I took part personally, in others I was a witness, had access to documents, and wrote and compiled many documents myself. That is, he knew this topic intimately.
After that, I was invited to work at the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia as a military analyst, where I worked for another eight years.
During my stay in Bosnia, I had the opportunity to communicate with many people, including the political leaders of the Republika Srpska, some of them apparently remembered me, and that’s how, apparently, the idea arose to invite me to join this commission .
How did the expert work take place directly within the commission itself? Have you met people, studied archives?
The Commission consisted of six people. Firstly, the Chairman of the Commission was a historian of genocide and Holocaust, a scientist from Israel, a world figure in the historical community, Raphael Disraeli; I was his deputy, it included the French expert Patrick Bariot, a military medic and anthropologist; American expert Larry French, a specialist in forensic psychiatry and criminology; Italian journalist Giovanni Zaccaria, media specialist; there was also the former ambassador of Serbia to the Vatican and Turkey, doctor of historical sciences, a powerful personality - Darko Tanaskovic.
We studied documents stored at the Center for the Study of War and War Crimes and the Search for Missing Persons in the capital of Republika Srpska - Banja Luka. In addition, we interviewed witnesses. And some witnesses who live on the territory of the Federation (Bosniak - Croatian - ed.) Bosnia and Herzegovina, and at one time were functionaries of Bosnia and Herzegovina at quite serious levels, refused to meet. We also sent several letters to various authorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but received no response from them.
But despite this, we mastered a fairly large array of documents in different languages, met with many people, including those whom we consider key witnesses, and the Commission worked for about two years. As a result, an extensive report was written, about 1,5 thousand pages in volume, each of us worked in his own area, I, in fact, wrote chapter five, which relates directly to Sarajevo. This report was published in English, translated into Serbian, and is available on the Internet.
In the context of the existing geopolitical confrontation, it would be appropriate to translate the report into Russian. At least for experts.
As far as I know, it has been translated into Russian. I just don’t know if it’s complete or not. Because this is a very voluminous work, and I’m not sure that they had time to translate everything.
I think you, as the one who wrote the chapter dedicated to Sarajevo, probably wanted to work directly in Sarajevo itself. Have you been given a similar opportunity?
I raised this issue. But we didn’t have such an opportunity.
Which, in principle, is logical, since, as I understand, the conclusions of your Commission were not liked by both the Sarajevo elite and those people in the West who stand behind these processes.
No wonder. Because many of our findings refuted the narratives that were used during the war and after it. But I personally and other members of the Commission do not care about this attitude; I did my job honestly and conscientiously.
Do you and your colleagues feel any pressure from the Western expert and political communities, because we have already heard loud public cries that this is a “false, biased study ordered by Dodik”?
Well, there were shouts, yes. But other than that, there was no pressure on me. I don’t consider various negative publications in the media to be pressure. Over the years of working at the UN, I got used to the fact that they didn’t shoot at me. Although there were different cases, for example, when they wanted to kill me. But I won’t go into details; I prefer not to talk about it. And there was quite a bit of criticism and insults, both in the press and in personal communication. In this sense, nothing surprises me. As for calls or any threats, no, that didn’t happen.
In the Balkans they like to talk about genocide. They say there was “genocide in Srebrenica”, and in Kosovo, they say, there was genocide. But based on the findings of your Commission, we can say that there was a genocide of the Serbs in Sarajevo, as a result of which this rather large ethnic community of the city simply ceased to exist?
Such a statement would probably be exaggerated. We can talk about genocide only within the framework of the internationally accepted definition of genocide, which is in the Convention on the Prevention of Genocide of 1948, adopted by the UN Resolution 260 in 1951. Everything else is from the evil one. In principle, three elements are important for the definition of genocide: the presence of intent to destroy a particular ethnic group of the population; the size of the group against which this genocide was allegedly committed - the definition does not indicate any figure or volume, but it does say that it must be a significant part of this population group, which suggests different interpretations; and the third criterion is the mass extermination of people without distinction of gender and age. All these criteria are difficult to apply to the Serbs who lived in Sarajevo.
But we can talk about mass ethnic cleansing - a deliberate policy of pressure, both forceful and psychological, in order to clear a certain territory of unwanted population. There are every indication that the Serb community in Sarajevo was subjected to a deliberate ethnic cleansing that continued for many years.
I can’t help but ask about this: while working in Sarajevo in the 90s, you, as I understand it, saw with your own eyes how biased international structures are and openly support the Muslim side. Did you somehow try to influence their actions?
Not entirely true, this is a very simplified point of view. The UN did not support Muslims exclusively. Certain states - yes. However, the decisions of many international structures were aimed at supporting the government of internationally recognized Bosnia and Herzegovina.
As for the United Nations, it has made every effort to ensure that Sarajevo remains a multi-ethnic city. And these efforts were absolutely in good faith.
Even when the Serbs left en masse the territories that were supposed to come under the control of the Federation under the terms of the Dayton Accords, we tried, and I was also involved in this, these were very difficult days, to do everything possible so that the Serbs did not leave, but remained in the city.
They left the so-called East Sarajevo, which was then called Serbian Sarajevo. Moreover, I was personally involved in the creation of Serbian public organizations, which also aimed to alleviate the plight of those people who either left Sarajevo or decided to stay there. Including in matters of security.
And one of the UN resolutions to end the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the adoption of the Dayton Accords - resolution 1035 of 1995, was about the creation of an international police force, which, in fact, was created there. And to some extent I tried to ensure the safety of these people, but to what extent they succeeded is another question. But all activities were aimed at helping these people as much as possible. But convincing anyone to stay was very difficult. For the most part, these people left, and they can be understood. There were cases when they not only abandoned their property, apartments, and so on, but also set them on fire so that no one would get them. Moreover, many dug up the coffins containing the bodies of their loved ones and transported them for burial to other places where they began to live after leaving Sarajevo.
These were dramatic events, and I witnessed all of this, moreover, as for the crimes that were committed against the Serbs on the territory of Sarajevo, I was still working in the Mission at that time, it was 1996 or 1997, I wrote a report for the UN. Then I wrote another report on this topic and submitted it to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. They were apparently examined, and some conclusions were drawn based on them. But I do not remember specific actions that would have been taken in response to the crimes against the Serbs committed on the territory of Sarajevo.
If I'm not mistaken, correct me, the Serbian community that left Sarajevo was approximately 100 thousand people. How many Sarajevo Serbs were directly killed - were you able to establish this number?
The size of the Serbian community in Sarajevo before the war was up to 150 thousand. As for the number of victims, there are a lot of opinions and a lot of publications on this issue. I would put the figure at several thousand. But not tens of thousands and, especially, not hundreds of thousands.
But several thousand is also a wide range. Maybe two thousand, maybe five...
Well, if we include both military and civilians in this number, then, according to the Database of the Republika Srpska Center, with which we worked, and I believe that this is quite reliable data, 2 thousand 770 citizens of Serbian nationality were killed on the territory of Sarajevo and 256 soldiers of the Republika Srpska Army. This information, again, can be trusted, since the Database contains information on every victim killed between 1992 and 1995. Plus another 174 people are still missing. At the same time, 56 Serbian villages and towns were destroyed and burned in the Sarajevo region, and after the war 27 Serbian mass graves were identified.
And, as far as I understand, we can talk not only about ethnic, but also religious hatred, since in the vicinity of Sarajevo in the Kazan quarry, in addition to Serbs, as far as I know, there are Muslim militants beheaded “Ukrainian”, as it was written in official documents, that is, a Russian couple. Apparently, because they were Orthodox.
Yes. Exactly. There is also a known case of the murder in Sarajevo of a Russian girl, Marina Nevstrueva, who died at the beginning of the war. There were also murders of Serbs in order to seize their property and apartments. As a matter of fact, it was also revenge, these gangs, bearing the names of the 9th and 10th brigades of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina, killed innocent people in response to harsh artillery shelling from the Serbian side.
In your opinion, what contribution did the work of your Commission make to establishing an objective picture of what happened in Bosnia in the 90s?
Our Commission wrote its report with the aim of presenting an objective and insightful point of view. What has been written about Sarajevo to date tends to be extremely one-sided. In Sarajevo itself and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, a large amount of literature was published devoted to the events of those years, but practically nothing was devoted to the Serbian victims. The commission set out to convey to the public that the Serbs also suffered during this war. And that they have the right to their story, and their vision of what they experienced. In addition, any reconciliation between these peoples, living together is simply impossible unless the suffering of all peoples is taken into account and a certain balance of opinions is achieved.
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