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In the summer of 1995, Croatia waged a lightning military campaign in which it took back most of the territory earlier captured by the Serbs.
It resulted in a mass exodus of about 200,000 Serbs from their self-proclaimed Republic of Serbian Krajina.
Columns of Croatian Serb refugees flooded into Serbia, further straining the already over-stretched economy.
In doing so, he tried to turn his image in the West from Balkan butcher into Balkan peacemaker. He abandoned Serb claims for a Greater Serbia, and was rewarded with a partial lifting of the international sanctions that had crippled the Serbian economy since 1991.