Archive · Assignments

Croatia & Vukovar

1991 · The opening siege of the Yugoslav wars — Knin, Osijek, Vukovar, photographs from his archive.

Argyris Dinopoulos, on assignment for SKAI 100.4 FM, was the first Greek journalist (and among the first foreign correspondents) to cover all the wars in the former Yugoslavia from the very first day.

The declaration by the Serb inhabitants of the independence of the "Republic of Krajina" (which lies in Croatia) in April 1991 was, according to historians too, the fuse for all the armed conflicts in the former Yugoslavia.

Not only the Serbia–Croatia war, but also the wars on the territory of the former Yugoslavia that lasted until 2001, when the Albanians of Tetovo clashed with the Slavs in what was then FYROM (the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia), today North Macedonia.

The coverage of the war in Croatia begins here. In April 1991 Argyris Dinopoulos was in Knin, the capital of Krajina, and interviewed the leader of the Krajina Serbs, Milan Babić.

A few weeks later, following a referendum, Milan Babić was proclaimed "President of the Republic of Krajina".

After the war ended he was convicted, in 2004, of war crimes and sentenced to 13 years' imprisonment by the International Court in The Hague (ICTY), and took his own life in his cell in 2006.

Argyris Dinopoulos's reports from Osijek and Vukovar in November 1991 recorded some of the most savage atrocities of the twentieth century's wars in Europe: what was left of the city after it fell — the ruins, and the dead not yet buried.