Vladimir Radomirovic (Belgrade, 1973) is editor-in-chief of Pistaljka or “whistleblower”, an online outlet that he founded with his wife Dragana in 2010 to denounce corruption in Serbia.

Vladimir, a Nieman fellow at Harvard, was impacted as a person, and shaped as a journalist, by his experience of the war in the former Yugoslavia in the 90´s. He grew up living the disintegration of his country, the NATO bombing of his hometown and the stigma associated with a nation that has always been blamed in the West for causing the conflict, and its worst abuses.

I was curious to know more about Vladimir´s experience on those days, and how it influenced the journalist he is now. But instead of asking him directly, I decided to present to him images of what took place two decades earlier and have him react to them. The pictures are the questions. This is how he responded: 

A young Serbian leader, Milosevic, gives a speech after becoming Communist Party head in 1987.

“Milosevic was raising in the ranks of the Communist party and he seized the opportunity during a visit to Kosovo to rally the minority serbs living there. Some people complained that they had been beaten by Albanians. That´s when he said his famous sentence: “No one will ever dare beat you again!”. It was a build up to what would become the war. At the time I was finishing elementary school. I was 14. I don´t recall having a clear sense of what was happening, but I knew there was something strange going on in Kosovo.”

Belongings of Srebrenica massacre victims litter a road after the mass execution of men and boys. It was the massacre that symbolized the war and portrayed the serbian army.

“One of the worst atrocities of the war.  It was the summer of 1995 and I was 21. There were many things happening at the time. It was a very tense period of the war with all sides pushing their offensives. Bosnian serb general Ratko Mladic entered Srebrenica, took away women and children and executed the men and the boys 16 years and up. I did not witness was happened in Srebrenica, it was difficult to access and cover war crimes at the time.

For me, the most impressive scene [I witnessed] from this period, the most dramatic, was in August 95. There was a huge column of people, Serbians from Croatia, and they were coming to Belgrade through the highway on tractors. Serbian police blocked all the exits so the people could not enter the center of the city. This was very emotional because all these people had been expelled from their homes and had travelled for days, and had been attacked by the Croatian army. I think early on the war the roles were set and the West and Western media blamed everything on serbs, but the fact is that there were war crimes committed by all sides.”

“It is incredible that it was in Bosnia, a place were people once believed in the unity and brotherhood of Yugoslavia, that most of the war crimes were committed. It is sad that people who are part of one nation can fight like that and keep people behind a wire fence and without food. There were terrible crimes committed, specially in Easter Bosnia.”

The attacks on Serbia started on March 24, 1999, bombing lasted 79 days and resulted in at least 2,500 deaths and more than 12,500 injuries.

“Actually this (Vladimir points to the building on the right) is my parent´s home and it is were we live now. At the time I was working for NBC News and I was looking at the scene from the other side. I remember I was shaking because this (Vladimir points to the explosion in the picture) was just 500 meters from my parent´s home. I called them on the phone to tell them to evacuate the building immediately. It was 1999, and they had hit a heating plant, and you could see flames at least 100 meters high. I thought my parents and my sister were in danger, but later I found they were OK.

I still think this bombing was unfair. Wester media and politicians claimed that this was a humanitarian intervention, when in fact NATO bombs were mostly killing civilians. There was no legal or moral justification for such and act. It was about helping Kosovo Albanians to win the war. Hundred of thousands of people were displaced and at least 5.000 died in all sides.”

Press clip from the war coverage. Serbs always felt it was bias against them.

“I think the Western media sided with the Bosnian and Croatian early in the war because Serbia was perceived a a communist relic and a country with ties to Russia. It was easy for reporters and media in general to get into this mindset of white and black, good and bad. Almost no Western journalist took the time to analyze what was going on. I think it is also because these reporters tend to trust their governments and some of these governments had an agenda in Yugoslavia.

I don’t think I would have been a journalist if it was not for the war. I felt so helpless, with all these forces that you cannot influencie, and I think journalism was a way out of this helplessness for me. By reporting I could at least do something and try to make a difference.”

Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, left, Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic, center, and Croatian President Franjo Tudjman, right, initial the peace agreement after 21 days of talks at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, Tuesday, Nov. 21, 1995. (AP/ Longstreath)

“This is a picture of the presidents of Serbia (Miloseviv), Bosnia (Izetbegovic) and Croatia (Tudjam), all very dubious persons that signed the Bosnian Peace accords: Milosevic was a staunch communist, Izetbegovic an islamic fundamentalist and Tudjam became a nationalist bordering fascism. When I saw this I was glad that the war would end, but I was skeptical on how this would wok out knowing these guys. This year it will mark the 20th anniversary of the signing of the deal and Bosnia is still an unfinished country without real democracy. I would have preferred that we could have kept Yugoslavia as a country, in some sort of union.

At the time of the war I thought they were all to blame, and we as a nation too. Now I see that the main reason for the war was the luck of institutions in Yugoslavia, democratic and accountable institutions that should have given voice to all people in the country.”

From war to the future: an image of a project for the city of Belgrade.

“Politicians in Serbia are very accustomed to fairy tales and this is just one more. They say they will turn Belgrade into the Dubai of souther Europe, but for something like this to happen Serbia will need to invest al least two billion dollar that it does not have, so this will remain a fairy tell.

One of the legacies of the war is very weak institutions, not just in Serbia but in all former Yugoslavia. When politicians seize power they try to have all the power in their hands and not try to develop institutions. This will be the main challenge for the future, to build independent minded people who will create strong institutions. I don’t think there will be any dramatic events as those we lived 20 years ago, but there is still a long way. I think there is some nationalism, but young people from all these countries communicate much better than my generation did. They share interests, and they have found a better way to understand each other.”