In the event of war or a state of emergency, the citizens of Serbia must prepare themselves to function without the support of public institutions for at least five days, the Concept of Total Defense of the Country predicts.
As reported by the Balkan Security Network portal, provision of food supplies and other basic foodstuffs for at least five days is considered an obligation of individuals in a state of war and state of emergency in order to ensure living conditions.
The Ministry of Defense will draft a regulation that will define individual preparations, that is, it will state precisely what each citizen should have in terms of food supplies and other necessities for survival during five or more days of a supposed crisis.
The COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine and the political instability of the world forced a change in the approach that was focused yesterday on the assessment that countries like Serbia need a defense system with a relatively small professional armed force.
The new trend is mass total defense in which each part of society and each individual citizen has its share of tasks, and the obligation of self-sustainability for five or more days refers to this, reports the portal.
Before the civil war in 1991, the Yugoslav defense model was based on the mechanism of total engagement of all human resources, and training was carried out for this. That system was maintained by inertia with the gradual decline of the state's interest, but civil defense had its important part of tasks in the spring of 1999. The interest in civil defense was later extinguished and since 2006 it has not been under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Defense.
Total defense as a term was reintroduced in the defense and national security strategies in December 2019, while the concept of total defense was defined last year, but that document is kept secret.
The Ministry of Defense recently published a summary of the basics of total defense, which is defined as joint, synchronized and hierarchically arranged measures, complex procedures and the execution of combat and non-combat activities. In the framework of civil defense, one of the priorities is to ensure the needs of both defense and the population.
State structures, economic companies and entrepreneurs in a state of war and state of emergency are obliged to ensure a regular supply of basic foodstuffs, water, fuel, electricity and other products and services. In this context, citizens are asked to survive on their own for a while if circumstances impose such a need.
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