There are people who, no matter where they are or what they do, carry their homeland and birthplace deep in their hearts. One of them is Slavomir Ristović, known as Sandro, from Kraljevo—a man whose life story sounds like a movie script. During the NATO bombing in 1999, while living and working in Italy, he decided to, believe it or not, fly a motorized hang glider straight toward the Aviano airbase, and he succeeded in that intention.
“I was driving a truck to Milan when I called my mother in Kraljevo. She told me the sirens had started and that she had to flee to the basement. When I heard that, I couldn’t just sit with my arms crossed. Otherwise, for years I had been flying recreationally; it was my favorite hobby in which I was quite good. After I found out about the bombing, I called my friends from the flight club and told them to make a banner saying ‘No war’ and ‘No guerra’. I wanted to go straight to Aviano,” Sandro begins his incredible story for RINA.
As he says, his plan was extraordinary. They filled a liter-and-a-half bottle with urine, which he called an “ecological bomb,” and then he took off in his motorized hang glider toward one of the largest NATO bases in Europe.
“I flew low, under the power lines, so the radars wouldn’t catch me. When I got close to the base, I rose to about 1,500 meters and unfurled the banner. I saw AWACS and Phantoms lined up below. I didn’t even get to throw the bottle of urine at them because they spotted me. My friends over the radio were shouting at me to look to the right, and an F-16 was coming at me,” Sandro says.
He adds that the plane passed very close to him, and he immediately tried to deploy his parachute. He barely managed to find the handle, deployed the parachute at the last moment, and fell right inside the Aviano base.
“Soldiers surrounded me from all sides. They put handcuffs on my thumbs and took me for interrogation. I didn’t even know until then that handcuffs could be put on thumbs. I didn’t sleep for two days and three nights. They thought I was a terrorist, questioning me on how and why I came. It was in the Italian media back then; when they realized I was a normal man but very affected by the injustice being inflicted on my country, they let me go,” he adds.
Although he did not succeed in hitting the base with the bottle of urine, Sandro’s idea bore fruit in at least some way.
“When they saw that I had managed to get through, they removed all the air traffic controllers to check them, so for three days, not a single plane took off from there to target Serbia,” says this brave man.
Despite spending almost half a century in Italy, Sandro never wanted to take Italian citizenship.
FIND OUT MORE
“They urged me for years to take the papers, but I didn’t want to. Only when you leave Serbia do you realize how much you love your country,” he says.
Today, he lives on the banks of the Ibar, where he is building a motel and a pub for guests from Italy. He is planning rooms, boats for the “Merry Descent” regatta, and a place where he will join the two worlds that marked his life – Serbia and Italy.
“Italians are good people; politics is something else. They welcomed me nicely there, but my heart always pulled me here,” Sandro concludes.
The courage of Slavomir Ristović was discussed in the media even before 1999 because this man, as recorded by “Barske novine,” performed the first hang glider flight from the top of Sozina to an improvised airport in Spičansko polje at the end of the eighties.
He was a champion of northern Italy and a participant in the European Hang Gliding Championship, taking many risks, as there was no strong wind to lift him after jumping from the rock.
Despite that, he performed a series of attractive maneuvers, including the loop-the-loop, which was his trademark. Several hundred people welcomed him at the airport in Sutomore, Barske novine wrote about this incredible Serbian patriot.
MORE TOPICS:
SERBIAN CHEF SHONE ON THE BIG STAGE: Miloš won a silver medal at an international competition!
Source: RINA; Photo: RINA