Conflicthistory and News

🇺🇦 Breaking!
The US has suspended the sharing of Intelligence data with Ukraine - Financial Times

Lavrov is farming Reddit Karma

Trade war already over??

The Đorđe Martinović incident occurred on May 1, 1985, when Đorđe Martinović, a 56-year-old Serb farmer from the Kosovar town of Gnjilane, arrived at a local hospital with a broken glass bottle lodged in his rectum. Initially, Martinović claimed that he had been attacked by two Albanian men while working in his field, but after interrogation by a Yugoslav People's Army colonel, he reportedly confessed that the injury was self-inflicted during a botched attempt at masturbation. According to one forensic analysis led by Slovenian doctor Janez Milčinski, Martinović had positioned a 500 ml bottle upside down on a stick or stake driven into the ground, intending to lower himself onto it for sexual gratification; however, he slipped, causing the bottle to break inside him under the force of his body weight. This explanation contrasted with an earlier medical team’s conclusion at the Military Medical Academy in Belgrade, which included doctors from multiple Yugoslav republics, who determined that the injuries were too severe and sudden to be self-inflicted, suggesting instead that at least two or more individuals had brutally inserted the bottle.

The incident quickly escalated into a major controversy, known as the "Martinović affair," and significantly worsened ethnic tensions between Kosovo's Serb and Albanian populations. Serbian nationalists seized on Martinović's initial claim of an Albanian attack, portraying it as evidence of deliberate persecution aimed at driving Serbs from Kosovo, a narrative amplified by the newspaper Politika, which alleged the attackers were Albanians seeking to seize Martinović’s land. This storyline resonated deeply with historical grievances, drawing comparisons to Ottoman-era impalement and elevating Martinović to a symbol of Serb victimhood, as reflected in poetry and art that likened his suffering to historical atrocities like the Jasenovac concentration camp. Serbian intellectuals and writers rallied around the incident, with figures like Zoran Gluščević comparing the plight of Kosovo Serbs to fascist persecution, while a petition declared Martinović’s case emblematic of the entire Serb nation’s struggle in Kosovo. Conversely, Albanian communities and some Yugoslav authorities dismissed it as a fabricated or self-inflicted incident, with claims of a coerced confession adding to the dispute. The conflicting narratives fueled mutual distrust and resentment, amplifying local tensions into a broader ethnic conflict that contributed to the rising nationalism and eventual disintegration of Yugoslavia in the years that followed.

🇺🇦 The LAV apc in service with 36th marine brigade.

🇪🇬🇸🇾 El-Sissi and Julani met in Egypt