Serbia, since the start of Russia's aggression against Ukraine, looks like a prison from a movie Three tickets to Hollywood. Everyone chose a side a long time ago, and now sometimes through the fence and more often through social networks, they prove their loyalty to Moscow or Washington. In this chaos, the role of the catalyst is played by the regime media, which have split according to the dictates from the headquarters. Everything seems grotesque and seriously competes with the cult scene of the argument from the mentioned film, in which the Russophile Mrgud and the guest worker from America, who came to visit his mother's grave, insult each other in the local prison, where they are locked up by the maniacal head of the police station who is waiting for the arrival of the president.
In all this we lost ourselves. We have forgotten that real decisions are made on the basis of beliefs and values.
Throughout history, the importance of which we overestimate as often as we underestimate, we made decisions based on our convictions. Lazar's departure to the Kosovo war, the rejection of Austria-Hungary's ultimatum, the March coup, the historic "no" to Stalin, are just some of the examples of decisions that have defined us. With those decisions, we fought for our freedom but also for the freedom of others and without mistake chose the socio-cultural model of the Western world.
Because of each of those decisions that brought with it blood, tears, pain and injustice, I love my country.
Because of such decisions, we were respected in that part of the world that was on the right side of history. And always, just always, you were disgusting to me those who around the pub tables proclaim Lazar as a utopian, Pašić as an exhibitionist, putschists as foreign mercenaries and Broz as a traitor.
Photo: APKiev
And then came the nineties, "sad and unhappy" as Đorđe Balasevic would say. We have nothing to be proud of from that period. We went in the direction of disintegration while the continent we belong to united with the song of Toto Kutunje Together, unite, unite Europe.. The path we chose led us to a historical detour from which we can never return to ourselves.
For where we are, we cannot blame the obvious unprincipledness of the international community, the double standards of the world's largest powers, nor the collective rape of the international parav. We are responsible for where we are.
Because of those decisions and choices, we don't have the respect of that part of the world that, at least declaratively, we want to join. Some of us freely admitted that we did not understand what happened in those years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Some have not realized it until today, and some of their unconsciousness lives tucked away in the non-governmental sector that would undo everything that happened before we made a mistake as people and as a people.
Scared of those two extremes, we were surprised to realize that the time of decisions is here again. Decisions should be made by us who made mistakes and did not show ourselves as worthy heirs of our ancestors whose decisions we celebrate on some holidays and constantly re-examine them from a narrow nationalist angle reserved for those who are unable to hide their own frustration.
And that's why, let's refrain from fatalism, there is no to be or not to be for Serbia. No ultimatum. Serbia will live even after us. And again, the people of that time will decide at some other historical moment burdened with the burden of our decisions.
Photo: APKiev
These days, we are actually choosing what kind of mark we will leave in history as a generation, we are choosing whether we will renounce the Balkan circle of madness that guarantees descendants only the obligation to pay debts that are the product of the decisions of our ancestors. And that's why our decision today must be in accordance with our beliefs.
And I am a million percent sure that we as a people believe that everyone has the right to live freely. I believe that after the bloody legacy of the recent past, which we have gone through together with our neighbors, we all despise war. And that's why I know that as a nation we cannot but condemn every bullet, grenade or rocket that someone fires into the heart, house and city of anyone.
If we put the matter this way, it is clear that we should institutionally condemn Russia's attack on Ukraine and that as a people, whose ties with Russia we cannot discuss rationally, we ask our brothers to immediately stop all military actions. And that is as much for the Ukrainians as for them, us, Europe and the Planet we live on.
When in this way we give up war as a model for resolving disputes in the 21st century, then we are ready to discuss sanctions against Putin's regime, whose promoters are "bombarding" us on social networks with simulations of Russia's nuclear attacks on Western European countries.
That war, even if the nuclear strikes were limited, would also kill our children.
And that is why it is necessary to join an almost unanimous European coalition against the regime, because of which Russian mothers are waiting with fear whether their sons who are in the army will call them or if they will receive a notification that they will never see them again. It is necessary to support Marina Ovsyanikova, who called on her compatriots to say no to war on Russian state television. It is our obligation to support all those civil and political activists who have a different opinion in Russia, and who are persecuted, arrested and killed because of that opinion.
And we need to do all this not to get something, we need to do all this because the fight against madness is the duty of true brothers and friends. We need to do all this so that somewhere at the beginning of the third decade of this century, we will finally find our soul, which we lost in the collision of centuries.
Photo: APBishiv near Kiev
It is time to avoid stupid explanations, we do not renounce such decisions of the brothers, Orthodoxy, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Gogol, Gorky, Yesenin, we do not renounce those who left their bones and incorporated parts of their bodies in the liberation of the great Yugoslavia from fascist Germany . This is not the moment for trade either, we do not choose the temperature in the apartments or the filling of the shelves with food products, which we are particularly sensitive to because of the vivid memory of the days of sanctions.
Today we choose whether we will accept the right of the stronger as the dominant way of solving international conflicts. We choose whether we will be on the right side of history, we choose the model of society we want to live in, we choose the side of the world we belong to.
And that side is the west side, and we somehow, I'm sure, know that.
If we are not sure, let's look at where our children want to live, let's look at the frightening numbers of those who drown on boats to reach that world. And once and for all, let's understand that there is no and can be no viable progress if we are not in agreement with the continent we live on.
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