In June 1991, Croatia declared independence from Yugoslavia. Two months later, the Yugoslav People’s Army laid siege to the Croatian city of Vukovar and devastated it. The city still carries both the visible and hidden scars of the 87-day siege. Its people want the missing to be found and those responsible to be punished.
The failure to resolve the mass killings and subsequent massacres of Croat prisoners stands as a warning. With Russia’s yet more devastating four-year war still underway against Ukraine, the failure to fully resolve the crimes and destruction of Vukovar and elsewhere in the former Yugoslavia stands as a warning to the world. Much like Bucha just outside Kyiv, it remains a byword for wartime savagery.
Along the banks of the Danube, roughly 50 miles upstream from Novi Sad, Vukovar is Croatia’s largest inland port. At the top of the city’s pockmarked water tower, a giant Croatian flag stands proud next to the river, easily visible from the Serbian border on its eastern bank.
During the battle for the city in 1991, the water tower was struck by nearly 700 shells and rockets, yet it didn’t collapse. Today, it is a powerful symbol of Croatia’s resistance.
Elsewhere, the signs of war are less visible. Vukovar has rebuilt much of what was destroyed. Streets once reduced to rubble are lined with restored buildings, and the city has slowly regained stability. But beneath the surface lies an unresolved legacy of war crimes, missing people, and a long struggle for justice.
“Vukovar suffered devastating military destruction that turned the city into ruins,” said Dr. Vlatka Vukelić, an expert in the crimes of the Communist Yugoslav regime at the University of Zagreb. “Civilians hid in their basements for months. After the Yugoslav army cut the final supply route into the city, it was completely surrounded.”
In Croatian collective memory, the city became a symbol of national survival, becoming known as the “City of Heroes.” When it finally fell on November 18, 1991, the violence did not end.
“Beyond the bravery of the city’s defenders and the hope of the population, the Yugoslav army’s fixation on Vukovar carried huge strategic significance,” Vukelić said. “By preoccupying a huge part of the Yugoslav forces, Croatians ensured valuable time for the consolidation and formation of defense elsewhere.”
Approximately 2,700 Croatian defenders and residents were killed or remain missing, with civilian deaths estimated to have exceeded 1,100. More than 7,000 people were transported to detention facilities across the river in Serbia, with the most notorious of all being the Ovčara Farm concentration camp.
The hangar at Ovčara was where more than 200 wounded people, civilians and wounded soldiers, were taken from the Vukovar hospital, tortured and killed in November 1991. Serbian troops then showed Western correspondents to the site, and claimed (preposterously) that the Croats were responsible. Vukovar became one of the first cities in the wars of the former Yugoslavia to be widely recognized as having been ethnically cleansed.
While the massacre and destruction of the city are well documented, culpability for many of the crimes has not been established. Although there have been investigations and convictions, more than 300 people from the Vukovar region are also still missing, and families continue to search for the remains of loved ones three decades after they disappeared. One Serbian trial took 14 years to complete.
Croatia’s amnesty law has complicated the pursuit of justice, and procedures to provide financial compensation and support for victims are bureaucratic and dysfunctional. There is also anger that, while Vukovar was listed in the war crimes case against Milošević, Serbia has not recognized or apologized for its role in the atrocities.
“The amnesty law was the chief political instrument used to end the conflict and achieve peace,” Vukelić explained. “But its implementation remains one of the most controversial topics of transitional justice in Croatia.”
A large number of serious criminals were classified as participants in an armed rebellion rather than as perpetrators of war crimes, she said. As a result, it was difficult for prosecutors to distinguish many of their crimes from acts that might be permitted in combat.
“Because many of the war crimes carried out in Vukovar remain unresolved and many of those responsible are based outside Croatia, it creates a sense that these incidents have gone unpunished,” Vukelić said. “There has been no recognition or official apology from the state that carried out these crimes either.”
It took a long time to create a legal framework to deliver support for victims in Vukovar, she added, and the help that is available is hard to access.
“Procedures for victim rights and compensation are still overly bureaucratic and far too complex for traumatized people,” she said. “In many cases, the bureaucratic system borders on extreme insensitivity.”
Despite the weight of its history, both visible and hidden, Vukovar is far from the ruin it once was. Reconstruction has transformed the city, and life has returned to its streets. But the past is never far away, and the water tower stands as a reminder, preserved as it was at the end of the siege.
Yet the deeper work of justice remains unfinished. For many Croats, and now Ukrainians, true closure will only be possible when the missing are found, the perpetrators are held accountable, and the crimes committed during the siege are fully acknowledged.
Éanna Mackey is a reporter based in Ireland with a background in geopolitics and economics. He has worked as a freelancer on post-conflict stories in both Northern Ireland and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and he was an International Center for Journalists Investigative Fellow in 2024.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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