Operation Flash was a big victory of the Croatian Army, one in a series that followed after the attempt to destroy Vukovar in late 1991, President Zoran Milanovic said at the event marking the anniversary of the military operation. He said it was the Croatian Army that stopped the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina and "not the American bombings."

“With the first operations to liberate western Slavonia, with few soldiers and even less equipment and ammunition, in conditions of international isolation and, at that time, lack of recognition, a weapons embargo… the Croatian Army took the initiative and did not lose until eventual victory in Storm and operations Maestral and South Move, in which, until October and in October 1995, Croatian commanders and soldiers were killed,” the president said.

Since the end of 1991 and in the 1995 operation Flash, Storm, Maestral and South Move, the Croatian Army was on the initiative, and gloriously ended the war, he added.

“The very end of the war cost Croatia because of other states’ political projects, the U.S. first and foremost.”

It was the Croatian Army’s arrival to Manjaca in Bosnia and Herzegovina that stopped the war in BiH, Milanovic said, “not the American bombings and finally the informal capitulation of Bosnian Serbs, Mladic and Karadzic, the agreement to negotiate and the lifting of the siege of Sarajevo.”

“I’m not for ideologising history, I find it dangerous, but children should be taught that, those are the facts,” the president said, honouring the 51 defenders who were killed in Operation Flash or died as a result of wounding, saying that they had been within reach of freedom and victory, but did not live to see it.