Archive · War Reports
Serbia, 1999
In March 1999, Argyris Dinopoulos, a correspondent for Antenna (ANT1), covered the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia from Belgrade. Based in the capital until June 1999, he broadcast from the sites of the strikes, in Belgrade and in other Serbian cities. The documentary, the dispatches and his photographs from those months are collected here.
Argyris Dinopoulos covered the NATO attack on Serbia as Antenna's correspondent, from the first day of the air raids on Belgrade, on 24 March 1999, to the agreement ending the NATO operation, on 10 June 1999, with the withdrawal of Serbian military forces from Kosovo.
Live transmissions were made either by telephone (from landlines) or over terrestrial television networks, which meant studio facilities had to be used, since it was not possible — as it is today — to use mobile networks to carry sound and picture.
Sending the video material (that is, the cassettes with the reports) also went over terrestrial television networks, and therefore through the Serbian telecommunications organisation, after the material had first been inspected and (often) censored.
For the Greek correspondents, though, there was another way of sending the television material — not least because Serbia's terrestrial telecommunications networks were frequently out of service.
With trusted Serbian drivers the cassette left Belgrade by road for the Serbia–FYROM border, and from there the material went out either through the Skopje telecommunications organisation, or the cassette went straight on by road to Thessaloniki.
The high points of the reporting were the bombings of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade; of the Serbian television building (after which foreign correspondents no longer had any means of televised transmission); of the historic Hotel Yugoslavia, in whose presidential suite Winston Churchill had once stayed; the destruction of the Zastava factory; the strikes on the bridges of Novi Sad, which cut the city in two; the frequent «collateral» civilian losses; and the downing by the Serbs of the American Stealth aircraft.
The NATO bombing of Serbia
Dinopoulos's longer documentary on the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia: reports from the sites of the strikes across the country, where — as he recorded — the casualties were mainly among the civilian population. The heaviest attacks fell inside the capital itself, a short distance from the foreign correspondents' hotel, and the reports capture the tension of the war almost in real time.
The reports
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Live Dispatches — Belgrade Live television dispatches from bombed Yugoslavia, March–June 1999 — excerpts from the coverage of a reporter who had followed the wars of the former Yugoslavia from their start.
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Belgrade — The Bombings A short excerpt from the longer "Belgrade" documentary, on the strikes inside the capital during the 1999 bombing.
Photographs
15 photographs · Click a photograph to enlarge.
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Belgrade, reporting from the ruins -
Belgrade, reporting with Kostas Sarros -
Outside the Chinese embassy -
Belgrade — the Chinese embassy -
The downing of the Stealth aircraft -
Reporting the downing of the Stealth, with Kostas Kandylis -
Reporting the downing of the Stealth -
Report from the Zastava factory, Kragujevac -
Belgrade — an alert for a new bombing -
Novi Sad — the bombing of the bridges -
With Giorgos Georgiadis at Novi Sad -
⚠Sensitive contentclick to view Niš — innocent civilians dead -
A night bombing of Belgrade -
With Giorgos Georgiadis and Kostas Kandylis -
Belgrade, 1999