But Curuvija told friends that their relations had been effectively broken off because of anti-Milosevic commentaries published by his newspapers, which received subsidies from democratic advocacy groups in the West, such as the National Endowment for Democracy. Until the NATO bombing campaign began on March 24, the independent Belgrade media were seen as one of the best hopes for Yugoslavia's fledgling democracy in the absence of a real political opposition to Milosevic. But they have largely fallen silent over the past three weeks, chastened by fears of retribution and by official censorship and harassment. At the traditional Easter midnight mass at Belgrade cathedral, the crowd was much less dense than in years past. A man selling candles outside the cathedral, Zarko Sarcevic, said that business was way down from last year.
People are frightened.
There was an air raid siren earlier this evening. In addition, there is a shortage of gasoline, so people don't want to use their cars. Under attack by the West and anxious to break out of its international isolation, the Belgrade government has been reaching out for support from other countries in the Orthodox Christian world, such as Russia, Greece and Cyprus. The Yugoslav parliament has even announced plans to consider some kind of political union with the Slavic states of Russia and Belarus, a romantic idea but one that may be too far-fetched for Serbs or Russians to rally behind. We can't even unite with former Soviet republics, so the idea of uniting with Yugoslavia is ridiculous.