04.12.2024.
Defence Minister’s congratulatory message on Veterans' Day
On the occasion of 4th December - Veterans Day, Minister of Defence Bratislav Gašić has sent a congratulatory message that reads:
I congratulate all war veterans on 4th December - the Veterans’ Day.
On that day, the armistice was signed in the First Balkan War in 1912. At that time, the Ministry of Defence took over the responsibility of meeting the needs of 400,000 soldiers - old warriors of the Army, because the Kingdom of Serbia, as a modern state, engaged about 12 percent of its population in the war along with all the material and financial reserves, while creating the Balkan Alliance with its neighbours. By providing properties for them in the southern part of the Kingdom of Serbia, the state and the Government have shown that it was possible to recognise and honour veterans in a certain way for their participation in the defence of the country.
Through their participation in the liberation wars for our homeland - mother Serbia throughout history, including the wars of the 1990s and the defence of the country during the NATO aggression, the war veterans have, among many other things, won us the right to freedom, the right to decide for ourselves, to choose our own associates and friends as partners in cooperation for a better tomorrow, and to decide for ourselves our own destiny. Thanks to you, war veterans, today we are proud of all those national values that you fought for and won. Thanks to your deeds, we do not forget our combatants and our heroes who, on the defence of the homeland, opened the gate of freedom, through which we passed and stayed in our country.
I am sure that this and all future days, years and centuries serve to remember all those who gave a lot to Serbia. Let us remember our ancestors and their deeds that we are proud of, let us never forget the price of freedom and the price of the heroes who laid down their lives on the altar of the homeland, and that we are deeply grateful and aware of a better future for their chivalrous struggle and their sacrifice.
I congratulate you on the holiday, in the hope that the wounds of war will never appear and open, convinced that members of the Ministry of Defence and the Serbian Armed Forces will make their full contribution to a strong and stable Serbia.
