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Serbia and Montenegro
The last remnant of Yugoslavia, from a 1992 federation to a loose union dissolved in 2006
Serbia and Montenegro was the final stage of Yugoslavia's long unwinding. When four republics left the socialist federation in 1991 and 1992, the two that remained formed the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which claimed to continue the old state. Most of the world did not accept that claim, and the country spent much of the 1990s under United Nations sanctions over its role in the wars in Croatia and Bosnia, then came under NATO bombing in 1999 during the Kosovo war. In 2003 it was reorganized as a loose State Union of Serbia and Montenegro, and in 2006 Montenegro voted narrowly to leave. Its most lasting legacy is the unresolved status of Kosovo.
The union covered about 102,000 square kilometers of the central Balkans, including Kosovo. Serbia's north is the flat, fertile Pannonian Plain of Vojvodina, crossed by the Danube and the Tisza. Belgrade, the capital, stands where the Sava joins the Danube. South of it the land rises through the hills of Šumadija and the Morava valley to the mountains of southern Serbia and Kosovo. Montenegro, about 13,800 square kilometers, packs rugged limestone ranges, the Tara River canyon, and the fjord-like Bay of Kotor into a short stretch of Adriatic coast, which gave the union its only access to the sea. Today the territory is divided between Serbia and Montenegro, plus Kosovo, which declared independence from Serbia in 2008 and whose status remains disputed.
Serbia and Montenegro proclaimed the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia on April 27, 1992. The UN Security Council imposed sanctions that May, and the new state was not allowed simply to take over Yugoslavia's UN seat. After the 1998–1999 war in Kosovo and NATO's air campaign, Security Council Resolution 1244 placed Kosovo under UN administration while affirming Yugoslav sovereignty. Mass protests ended Slobodan Milošević's rule in October 2000, and the country joined the UN as a new member that November. Under an EU-brokered agreement it became the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro on February 4, 2003, sharing a president, parliament, army, and foreign policy but keeping separate economies. On May 21, 2006, 55.5 percent of Montenegrin voters chose independence, just above the 55 percent threshold, and Serbia became the union's legal successor in June.