Operation Flash is a military-police operation of the Croatian Army and Special Police of the Republic of Croatia. It began on May 1, 1995, when Croatian military and police forces liberated the occupied areas of western Slavonia with lightning action.
In just 31 hours, about 500 square kilometers of territory occupied by the Serbian military were liberated and control of the A3 motorway was established.
Operation Flash was, in military terms, a continuation of the successful military operation Otkos 10 from December 1991, when most of western Slavonia was liberated.
In line with the retaliation strategy devised in Belgrade, in response to Operation Flash, the Serbian army carried out terrorist attacks on civilian targets in Croatian cities. The citizens of Zagreb were attacked with rocket-propelled grenades, and the citizens of Karlovac and Sisak with artillery shells.
In the repeated rocketing of Zagreb, the very center of the city was filled with rocket-propelled grenades from VBR Orkan, killing 7 civilians and injuring over 200. In artillery fire on a densely populated part of the city where there were no military targets at all, and where rockets dropped so-called "bells" intended primarily for injuring and killing people in the open.
Milan Martic, a Serbian war criminal, openly boasted on radio and television that he had personally issued the rocket order. It is precisely Martic's public praise that has become the basis of the Hague indictment and is one of the few examples of public praise for war crimes.
At the war crimes trial in The Hague, Milan Martic was sentenced to 35 years in prison, largely because of the indiscriminate rocketing of Zagreb, which caused civilian casualties.
In Croatia, the war is primarily referred to as the "Homeland War". A majority of Croats wanted Croatia to leave Yugoslavia and become a sovereign country, while many ethnic Serbs living in Croatia, supported by Serbia, opposed the secession and wanted Serb-claimed lands to be in a common state with Serbia.
Most Serbs sought a new Serb state within a Yugoslav federation, including areas of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina with ethnic Serb majorities or significant minorities, and attempted to conquer as much of Croatia as possible.
Croatia declared independence on 25 June 1991, and cut all remaining ties with Yugoslavia on 8 October 1991.
The JNA initially tried to keep Croatia within Yugoslavia by occupying all of Croatia. After this failed, Serb forces established the self-proclaimed state Republic of Serbian Krajina (RSK) within Croatia. One part of the Croatian population was killed and the other expelled from the territory of the so-called RSK, and Serbian paramilitary units aided by the JNA (Yugoslav People's Army) occupied the territory and wanted to annex it to Serbia.
In the documentary, soldiers, officers and police officers who took part in the Flash operation tell us about their experiences.