Yugoslavia - to go or not?

Nothing but bewilderment can be caused by Vladimir Snegirev's article "Set aside!" Formally, she is a response to an appeal to a newspaper by a certain Smirnov: "I want to go as a volunteer in Kosovo. Help . "

It seems that the author of the article opposes the trip of volunteers to the former Yugoslavia: "There is no need to go as a volunteer ... Any shooting in Kosovo (as well as, however, in Karabakh, Abkhazia, Transnistria ...) will not help local residents solve their problems ". But here are the passages that make one doubt the sincerity of this answer: “If there was only one such Smirnov... But the Russians always went as volunteers to the Balkans when the Serbs were offended there. How does a person end up in someone else's war? I met my compatriots there more than once... I came across outright adventurers... But still, there were more others who came with a naive desire to help their Slav brothers." Then there are sentimental descriptions of these "others" who "do not go to earn money, but to defend ideals." “How can we help our reader Smirnov to go as a volunteer to Kosovo?” the author asks. " .

According to V. Snegirev, we should have helped Yugoslavia earlier, and not with soldiers, and, moreover, not with humanitarian aid in the form of blankets, etc., but with air defense systems. That is, let us recall, to get out of the embargo system and enter into an almost direct military confrontation with NATO, which was then insisted on by the communist-patriotic opposition. *"Today, President Putin is making sharp statements, and Russian diplomacy is acting more vigorously. I hope that this is far from all that we can offer as assistance.

If this is all, then my arguments for the reader of Smirnov may not be enough. And he will go to war of his own free will.

An interesting way to persuade the government newspaper... After that, is it any wonder that in an interactive poll conducted on March 22 by the TVC channel on the same topic, more than 50% of the respondents were in favor of sending Russian soldiers to the conflict area?

Sources

• Snegirev Vladimir. Set aside! // Russian newspaper. 2004. March 23.