Vračić was fourteen then, taking shelter from Serbian shells in the basement of her home in Sarajevo. “We were listening to the radio,” she remembered, “and they were playing patriotic songs about our army being so strong and how, whenever this was over, we would be celebrating.” But thirty years later there was only bitterness. “This is what I really fear for Ukrainians,” she said:
They should really brace themselves for lots of disappointments that will come.… People who were not even necessarily in Ukraine will be the ones celebrated afterwards for the successes of the Ukrainian army. People who are not on the front lines will become rich overnight. War profiteering and all the stuff that Ukrainians don’t necessarily see at this moment will come, and these disappointments will hurt them more than the actual war.