There was organised transport. There were calls to turn out in numbers. An audience - barely. In Mrkonjic Grad, where the authorities of Republika Srpska organised a gathering to mark the anniversary of Operation Storm, relatively few participants showed up. All the most senior officials of Serbia and Republika Srpska did, however. When the podium is full and the chairs are empty, that is a message in itself.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic was the main speaker. He called the military and police operation that in August 1995 liberated the then-occupied part of Croatia's territory a crime that Serbs must not forget, with a warning that nothing similar will ever be repeated. The religious service was led by the Serbian Orthodox Church's Patriarch Porfirije, who in his sermon described the operation as "a terrible persecution without precedent in the 20th century" - while also calling on the faithful to seek "peace and good neighbourly relations with those with whom they share the same living space".

A speech for domestic use

Vucic repeated his old lines about conspiracies against Serbia and unjust accusations. He claimed that stories about an agreed collapse of the rebel para-entity in Croatia are false, and offered those gathered an apology "because Serbia in 1995 was weak". He noted that he was speaking for the last time as president of Serbia "without knowing whether that will ever be the case again" - a sentence that says more about the domestic political calculation than about 1995.

He complained that Croatia had banned him from visiting Jasenovac even though he is "a descendant of victims", and claimed Croatia "lies every day and deceives the whole world". He said he hopes he will not have to use the army for defensive purposes, because he knows there are some waiting for a "second half".

The leader of the ruling party in Republika Srpska, Milorad Dodik, went further still. "Shame on the Croats," he said, claiming that today's Croatia aimed "to finish the work of the Ustasha NDH". He accused Croatia of "aggression against Republika Srpska", the US of participating in "genocide and ethnic cleansing", and Montenegro's authorities of betraying Serbs. He concluded that Serbia must be strong, because that is the only way Croats and Bosniaks will be defeated, and that nobody will stop the integration of Serbia and Republika Srpska.

Who does this serve now

Thirty-one years on, two states still cannot sit at the same table over the same August. That is a fact and it is not new. What is new is when "never again" gets packaged together with an announcement that something must "be finished", while on the other side a second half is invoked - that is no longer memory, that is a schedule.

The region knows this scene by heart. An anniversary, a microphone, a historic injustice, and at the end - a sentence about who will defeat whom. The question rarely asked out loud is a different one: what does an ordinary person in Banja Luka, in Knin or in Mrkonjic Grad get out of one more speech like this? Judging by the empty chairs, it seems they already have their answer.