Picturing War: Demoralised Serbian Fighter Questions the Value of Victory

Milos 'Cvele' Cvetkovic was walking the streets of the devastated Croatian city of Vukovar in November 1991, right after Serbian forces entered the city.

Walking past the ruins of buildings and the dead bodies, he took one of his most significant photographs - one of the town's 'liberators', as they were called in the Serbian media - sitting dejectedly on an ammunition box.

"I'm thinking, look at what the 'liberator' looks like, the things they filled his head and all the other people's heads with before the war," Cvetkovic told BIRN in an interview.

"Vukovar was torn apart, this house and everything, and now he is the liberator and the winner, what and who did he vanquish?"

Vukovar, near the border with Serbia, was the first city in Europe to be destroyed by fighting since the end of World War II and the first major instance of large-scale war crimes during the break-up of Yugoslavia.

In 1991, the Yugoslav People's Army and Serbian paramilitary units encircled the city following Croatia's declaration of independence from Yugoslavia. Some 7,000 missiles fell daily on the city throughout a three-month siege, which destroyed about 85 per cent of the buildings.

The city felt on November 18, when Serbian forces entered Vukovar. Following them, some journalists and photographers also entered the city. Cvetkovic was among them and managed to capture his picture of the Serb fighter amid the ruins.

"In my opinion, the picture is very strong and says a lot; a real anti-war picture," he said.

'We liberated Vukovar to the ground'

Troops on the streets of Vukovar after it fell in November 1991. Photo: Milos Cvetkovic.

Before the war and the break-up of Yugoslavia, Cvetkovic,...