On the shelves are a saucepan and a box of toothpicks, in some places in the city people resell gasoline in bottles and plastic buckets.
Exactly three decades have passed since this picture in Yugoslav cities.
"It was as if the bread they bought was made from sand, not flour, everything was of poor quality, you couldn't buy anything.
"We received a salary that amounted to ten marks, and one egg on the market cost one mark," Leposava Milutinović recalls the sanctions period for the BBC in Serbian.
On May 30, 1992, the United Nations Security Council imposed sanctions on the then Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY), the union of Serbia and Montenegro.
An immediate reason the introduction of sanctions was the massacre of civilians in the bread line in Vase Miskina Street, in the center of Sarajevo, for which Serbs from Bosnia and Herzegovina were immediately accused, and the earlier grenade attack at the Markale market in Sarajevo when 68 people died and almost 200 were wounded.
- When the inhabitants of Serbia were millionaires
- America imposed sanctions on the Balkans
- Can a country be expelled from the United Nations?
The sanctions prohibited the export and transit of goods, the transfer of financial resources, and the FRY could not even participate in international sports events.
This set the country back twenty years, believes Ljubodrag Savić, a professor at the Faculty of Economics in Belgrade.
"It was not only the separation of the state into republics, but also the breaking up of the single market, and communication with the outside world was practically impossible," says Savić.
Two years old hyperinflation i isolation from the rest of the world
The introduction of sanctions against the FRY was supported by 13 UN Security Council countries, including the Russian Federation, while China and Zimbabwe abstained.
Security Council consists of five permanent members - the United States, Great Britain, France, Russia and China - who have the right to veto any decision.
In addition to permanent members, there are also ten non-permanent members who change every two years.
"The serious events in Serbia and Montenegro pose a threat to the national security, foreign policy and economy of the United States," said US President George W. Bush older.
Bush also ordered the Ministry of Finance to seize all assets of the Yugoslav government in the United States, which, according to the White House's estimate, amounted to about 200 million dollars.
Except for food and medicine, all imports and exports, including oil, are prohibited.
A blockade of Yugoslav seaports was introduced, all FRY vessels that were outside its waters at that time were seized.
Yugoslav assets in the USA were blocked and Americans were prohibited from investing in Yugoslavia.
The Security Council of the United Nations previously adopts Resolution 713, which introduced an embargo on arms exports to the Yugoslav republics.
The collapse of the single market and sanctions caused inflation in the FRY that lasted from mid-1992 to early 1994.
In the midst of one of the biggest inflations recorded in the world, on September 22, 1993, Yugoslavia passed the Law on the denomination of the national currency, according to which from October 1, one million dinars was worth one dinar.
The state has tried on several occasions to change the value of the dinar through decrees and laws, thus masking the consequences of hyperinflation.
The last such decision, on January 24, 1994, introduced a new dinar equal to the German mark.
Dayton Peace Agreement which was signed in 1995, ended a war that lasted more than three and a half years.
America has maintained the so-called external wall of sanctions, says economist Ljubodrag Savić.
He adds that everything ended with the bombing, when not only the Serbian economy was destroyed, but also the standard of living.
"The entire series of events that marked the last decade of the last century may be one of the worst periods," the professor believes.
In 1999, NATO bombed the former Yugoslavia with the explanation of preventing a humanitarian crisis and stopping the conflict in Kosovo.
'Empty stores, and children need to be fed'
At the time the sanctions were introduced, Leposava Milutinović was 40 years old, had two children and lived in Niš.
Her daughter attends the fourth grade of high school, and her son is a primary school student.
"I gave 90 marks, which was about five of my salary, to buy books for my daughter.
"She didn't get the books, and they didn't return our money," says Milutinović.
She remembers that she was supposed to visit a relative who was celebrating her birthday, and that for the occasion she bought two chocolates for 15 marks, and that day she received a salary in the amount of three marks.
It was the winter of 1993.
"For 60 thousand dinars, we could get four marks in the morning, and in the evening we could get three marks for the same amount at the dealer on the main street," she says.
There was almost no sugar and flour in the stores, and the children had to be fed somehow, so, as she says, she had to make cakes with the available ingredients,
He still keeps the printed recipes - sugar free donuts, cake without eggs.
She remembers that her neighbor, an electrical engineer, smuggled gasoline and that there were certain places in the city where gasoline was resold.
"Gasoline was sold in bottles and in plastic buckets because people could not buy 10 liters, but barely two," says Milutinović.
During that time, as he says, the media talked about how "everything is fabulous and great".
How Yugoslavia fell apart
On June 25, 1991, Slovenia officially declared independence, thus implementing the decision made in the December 1990 referendum.
The Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) brought tanks onto the roads and streets throughout Slovenia and tried to regain control of border crossings and airports where Slovenian flags and the inscriptions "Republika Slovenija" were displayed.
After ten days of sporadic clashes in which around 75 people died and more than 300 were injured, the JNA withdrew from Slovenia.
In the spring of 1991, in the area of Lika, clashes broke out between local Serbs and Croatian police, and the first major armed clash took place on the Plitvice Lakes, on Usrks, on March 31 of that year.
The rebel Serbs claimed that they did not feel safe in the referendum atmosphere in which Croatia voted to secede from the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRJ).
The authorities in Zagreb claimed that they wanted to establish order and control on the territory of the whole of Croatia.
The events were a prelude to the armed conflict during which Yugoslavia disintegrated in the following years bloody war.
The civil war in Yugoslavia claimed the most victims in Bosnia and Herzegovina - about 100.000, 2,2 million people were displaced, and the conflict ended with the Dayton Agreement in 1995.
Watch the video about the brief history of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
Follow us on Facebook, Twitter i Viber. If you have a topic proposal for us, contact us at bbcnasrpskom@bbc.co.uk
Bonus video:
