The Serbian military will make sure that none of the atrocities committed against Serbs in the past ever happen again, Defence Minister Aleksandar Vulin said on Monday.

“The Army of Serbia (VS) is a winning military whose force sends the message that Jasenovac, Jadovno, Oluja, Bljesak and the March 2004 pogrom in Kosovo will never happen again anywhere,” Vulin said at a ceremony to mark VS Day in Belgrade’s Sava Center alluding to World War 2 concentration camps in which thousands of Serbs, Jews and Roma people were killed, and the Croatian military operations against Serb forces in the 1990s and unrest in Kosovo.

 “The VS is carefully watching to make sure no one enters northern Kosovo by force,” Vulin said.  

“We are an army of winners, an army that has not learned how to capitulate, undefeated because we defend the right of our people to freedom,”the Defence Minister said. Vulin said the Serbian military would get new weapons and equipment.

“For the first time since 1999 we will have a squadron of modernised MiG-29s, we will reinforce the army with T-72 tanks, the Lazar-3, armored Milos, Lasta airplane and more than 40 products from our defence industry but above all the army is made up of people,” he said.

The VS chose April 23 for its day to mark the anniversary of an 1815 uprising against Ottoman rule.  

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