Pyrrhic Yugoslav People's Army victory [ 1 ] [ 2 ]. Yugoslav People's Army. Armed Forces of Croatia. Before the Croatian War of Independence the Baroque town was a prosperous, mixed community of Croats , Serbs and other ethnic groups.
In , an armed insurrection was started by Croatian Serb militias, supported by the Serbian government and paramilitary groups, who seized control of Serb-populated areas of Croatia. The JNA began to intervene in favour of the rebellion, and conflict broke out in the eastern Croatian region of Slavonia in May Vukovar was defended by around 1, lightly armed soldiers of the Croatian National Guard ZNG and civilian volunteers, against as many as 36, JNA soldiers and Serb paramilitaries equipped with heavy armour and artillery.
Most of Vukovar was ethnically cleansed of its non-Serb population and became part of the self-declared proto-state known as the Republic of Serbian Krajina. A cease-fire was declared a few weeks later. Vukovar remained in Serb hands until , when it was peacefully reintegrated into Croatia with the signing of the Erdut Agreement. It has since been rebuilt but has less than half of its pre-war population and many buildings are still scarred by the battle.
Its two principal ethnic communities remain deeply divided and it has not regained its former prosperity. Vukovar is an important regional centre on Croatia's eastern border, situated in eastern Slavonia on the west bank of the Danube river. The area has a diverse population of Croats , Serbs , Hungarians , Slovaks , Ruthenians and many other nationalities, who had lived together for centuries in relative harmony before the Croatian War of Independence.
It was also one of the wealthiest areas of Yugoslavia before the conflict. The region underwent major demographic changes following the Second World War , when its ethnic German inhabitants were expelled and replaced with settlers from elsewhere in Yugoslavia. The town's population was 47 percent Croat and 33 percent Serb. From , Yugoslavia was governed as a federal socialist state comprising six newly created republics — Slovenia , Croatia , Bosnia and Herzegovina , Serbia , Montenegro and Macedonia.
