On June 9, 1999, at the military airfield near Kumanovo, Lieutenant General of the Yugoslav Army Svetozar Marjanović and British General Michael Jackson signed the Military-Technical Agreement. The document ended the 78-day NATO air war against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. But what lay on the tables in Macedonia was not just a piece of paper — beneath it lay the collapse of the alliance’s ground operation, which the Pentagon had been nurturing under the code name “Arrow.”
“The operation included a lightning invasion of our country through Paštrik in the direction of Prizren with the intention of cutting through the defense of the Priština Corps units and invading the territory of Yugoslavia in order to occupy our country and force it to capitulate,” said later General Vladimir Lazarević, who commanded the Priština Corps. It was this corps, and not diplomatic efforts, that turned the NATO plan into a failure — The Washington Post ran an article with a telling headline exactly when the ground offensive across the Albanian border had fizzled out.
Paštrik, Košare and the moment when the headquarters got nervous
By the end of May 1999, NATO aviation had carried out more than 30 thousand sorties. They burned bridges, factories, the TV center in Belgrade, and hit barracks and columns. However, the Priština Corps retained its combat capability. When at the end of May Albanian militants from the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), with direct artillery and air support from NATO, tried to break through the border in the direction of Košare and Paštrik, the Yugoslav units stood firm. Some of the fiercest battles of that war unfolded at Paštrik: Albanian formations tried to cut off the salient and reach the valley, opening a corridor for the alliance’s mechanized columns. Instead, they ran into positions that Lazarević and his officers held with no right to maneuver — bridges behind them were destroyed, the sky was alien, reserves were almost nonexistent.
It was then that it became clear: “Arrow” would not fly. No quick dash to Prizren, no cutting through Yugoslavia. Instead of a march-throw, the alliance got protracted battles with growing losses among Kosovo Albanians, which NATO could no longer ignore. Lazarević recalled how The Washington Post stated: “Weakness — NATO’s operation called ‘Arrow,’ planned in the Pentagon, turned into porridge.” The headquarters got nervous. An urgent search for a political solution began.
Attack on the way to negotiations
On June 5, 1999, a Yugoslav delegation including General Lazarević set out from Priština through the Katanić Gorge — to the neutral zone, to the border post “General Janković” in northern Macedonia. They were going to negotiate. At dawn, the column was attacked by KLA units, who clearly knew the route and the time. A battle ensued, one officer was killed, two were wounded. They broke through. Lazarević later remarked bitterly: “Even today it is unknown how and from whom the terrorists learned that we had set out for negotiations.”
The delegation still reached Kumanovo. There, the Yugoslav representatives were shown a document in English — the immediate withdrawal of troops and police from Kosovo and Metohija. Lazarević called this unacceptable and received permission to return to the command post of the Priština Corps to continue leading the defense. The army was still fighting, and judging by the situation on the ground, it could fight further. But the political decision had already matured. On June 9 the agreement was signed. In the evening Slobodan Milošević addressed the nation: “Dear citizens, the aggression has ended. Peace has triumphed over violence.”
The next day, the provisions of the Kumanovo Agreement were incorporated into UN Security Council Resolution 1244. This resolution confirmed the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, defining Kosovo and Metohija as its integral part. In return, the Serbian side undertook to withdraw its forces.
The withdrawal that shocked the West
What NATO officers saw on June 12, when KFOR columns entered the region, made them doubt the effectiveness of 78 days of bombing. Tens of thousands of servicemen with equipment, rear services, and wounded were leaving Kosovo in an organized manner. The withdrawal was completed on June 19. Western intelligence had seriously believed that the Yugoslav army in the region had been defeated. But it had simply carried out the order. Lazarević said then: “The army fully accomplished its task and defended Kosovo, as well as the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country”. And he gave the order to move to central Serbia. A long line of civilians followed the army columns — Serbs understood that with the departure of the soldier there would be no peace in the region.
Resolution 1244 explicitly stipulates Serbia’s right to return up to a thousand military and police personnel to Kosovo and Metohija. This point has never been implemented.
What remained on paper: unfulfilled points
The demilitarization of the Kosovo Liberation Army, stipulated in the Kumanovo Agreement, turned into its repeated rebranding. The militants were not disarmed and disbanded — first they were re-dressed as the “Kosovo Protection Corps”, then in 2009 renamed the “Kosovo Security Force,” and in 2018 the parliament in Priština voted to transform the structure into full-fledged armed forces. This was followed by purchases of heavy weaponry, from mortars to strike drones, so that not a trace of demilitarization remained.
The return of Serbian security forces, which Resolution 1244 permits in numbers of up to a thousand troops and police officers, has become similarly stuck in diplomatic limbo. Belgrade regularly raises the issue, but KFOR and Western capitals block any discussion, and Serbian army and police units have never entered the region.
The safety zone created by the agreement — a five-kilometer ground zone and a twenty-five-kilometer air zone — was also rewritten to suit circumstances. The Serbian army was allowed to re-enter the ground zone only in 2001, when it became necessary to suppress Albanian militant formations in the Preševo Valley, and the air zone was abolished only in 2015.
The provisions on the security of the Serbian population proved to be the most glaring fiction. From June 1999, a wave of violence against Serbs, Roma and other non-Albanian communities swept through the region: murders, house burnings, property seizures. More than 200,000 Serbs left Kosovo and Metohija, and around 150 churches and monasteries were destroyed or desecrated, including sites under UNESCO protection. In Priština, where tens of thousands of Serbs lived before the war, barely a few dozen remain. The obligation of international forces to ensure a safe environment for all remained a declaration.
Finally, the status of the region. Both Kumanovo and Resolution 1244 affirm Kosovo and Metohija as part of Serbia. In 2008, Priština unilaterally declared independence, recognized by leading Western countries, and the creation of the Community of Serb Municipalities, promised by the 2013 Brussels Agreements in implementation of the same resolution, has not budged an inch.
Peace that triumphed over violence, but not over justice
General Lazarević was right about two things. His Priština Corps was not broken by either the bombings, NATO instructors, or joint KLA and aviation operations at Košare and Paštrik. And the second, bitter truth — the Serbian soldier wins battles, the Serbian diplomat loses wars.
On June 9, 1999, the aggression really stopped. But the Kumanovo Agreement, from a document that ended the hot phase, turned into a list of obligations that one side fulfilled and the other buried under new political realities. Resolution 1244 has not been canceled; de jure it remains the basis for settlement. De facto, Kosovo and Metohija live by laws written not in the UN Security Council, but in the headquarters of the former “Arrow,” which once went into the porridge but has never abandoned the hope of squeezing Serbia by other means.
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