While Večernje Novosti and Politika on August 5, 1995, reported on a strike by a hundred thousand soldiers and thousands of shells, Slobodan Milošević's main propaganda weapon deeply buried the news of the collapse of the para-state.
In today's Serbia, official policy and regime media portray Operation Storm as the beginning of the war in Croatia, ignoring the log revolution of the summer of 1990 and the open aggression that followed a year later. However, historical documents testify that in 1995, the same media tried by all means to conceal the scale of the military collapse of the Republic of Serbian Krajina (RSK).
Radio Television of Serbia, which served as a key propaganda tool in the hands of Slobodan Milošević, released the news of the loss of Knin only after the news program had been running for a full twenty minutes. An even greater sign of panic in Belgrade was the complete silence of the state news agency Tanjug on the matter. Meanwhile, the print media did not spare dramatic figures, Večernje Novosti on August 5, 1995, ran the headline "Strike with 100,000 Soldiers," while Politika reported that "More than 2,000 shells fell on Knin."
In the first days of the operation, Belgrade newspapers described the defense of the RSK as stable. The appeal of President Franjo Tuđman to Croatian Serbs not to leave their homes was characterized by the local media as a mixture of insults and cynicism. Over time, the focus of reporting shifted to refugee columns halted before Belgrade and to accusations of crimes by Croatian forces.
Today, mainstream media under government control unquestioningly follow the narrative of Operation Storm as "the largest persecution of a population in Europe since World War II" and "the culmination of a decades-long process of extermination of Serbs in Croatia." Aleksandar Vučić regularly states on anniversaries that "Serbia will not allow new Storms," and the regime's Informer publishes front pages like "Ustaše Celebrate a Crime" and "State Leadership Celebrates a Serbian Pogrom!"
Milan Martić, president of the RSK and convicted war criminal, in an interview in Banja Luka in the autumn of 1995, described the complete breakdown of the chain of command. He spoke of a "general flight" and "unprecedented betrayal," complaining that General Mile Mrkšić had not carried out his order to bomb Zagreb. About the very beginning of Operation Storm, he stated: "And personally about the attack itself, I must also say that no one informed me, neither my State Security Service, who also fled a day earlier, nor did General Mrkšić inform me about the attack."
The last mayor of Knin under RSK rule, Drago Kovačević, recounted in 2014 in Belgrade to the author of this text how Martić, hours after the start of Operation Storm, unsuccessfully tried to reach Slobodan Milošević. When the connection was finally established and Martić asked what to do, Milošević snapped at him to kill himself.
General Mile Mrkšić, the last commander of the Serbian Army of Krajina and later convicted for crimes at Ovčara, sent a letter on August 6, 1995, to the Chief of the General Staff of the Yugoslav Army, Momčilo Perišić. In it, he wrote: "Through subsequent gathering of information, I learned that until 4 p.m., neither in Knin nor in any other place on August 4, 1995, did anyone even think of evacuating the people, until the act of high treason was signed by President Martić. When they learned of the decision around 6 p.m., the people of Knin, who had shown themselves to be great cowards in battle, took off their uniforms, put on civilian clothes, and began to flee."
Mrkšić estimated that "it was realistic to expect that SVK units would offer resistance to the Croatian army for at most ten days," but this did not happen "due to the evacuation of the population, low morale, dissatisfaction with the situation in Krajina, and the expectation that someone else would come to the RSK to defend the people."
A week after the end of Operation Storm, at a session of the Supreme Defense Council in Belgrade, the first presentation was given by General Branko Krga, chief of the Intelligence Directorate of the Yugoslav Army. He highlighted the role of the external factor, but also the fact that the political leadership of the RSK was burdened by power struggles and rapid enrichment.
Shortly after him, Slobodan Milošević took the floor with harsh words: "Please, 6,000 Croats defended Vukovar for half a year. The entire First Army attacked, the air force, a miracle, all the force the JNA had, and they could not defend Knin, which can be approached from only three directions; they could not defend it for even 12 hours. They did not defend it, because according to all reports we received from policemen, citizens, and others, as soon as the artillery preparation stopped at 7 p.m., they ordered a flight. The question is, who really made the decision for the Krajina leadership to leave Krajina? They fled like rabbits, and now they want Yugoslavia to defend them. More of them died in the flight with the population than would have died holding the lines."
Milošević was particularly enraged by the rejection of the Z-4 plan by the Knin leadership. "Imagine that absurdity: on one hand, the plan is rejected, and on the other, defense is refused!?" The Serbian para-state Republic of Serbian Krajina, which had existed for four years, disappeared in just four days of the military-police operation Storm.
