Vukovar-Srijem County
Site of the 87-day siege (1991)—Europe's fiercest battle since WWII, first town entirely destroyed. Borovo factory fell from 24,000 to 1,000 workers. 40% unemployment. Water tower memorial left damaged.
The 87-day siege of Vukovar in autumn 1991 became the defining battle of Croatian independence. Some 1,800 lightly armed defenders held the baroque Danube port against 36,000 Yugoslav Army soldiers and Serbian paramilitaries, absorbing up to 12,000 shells daily in what observers called the fiercest European fighting since 1945. When the city fell on November 18, it was the first major European town entirely destroyed since World War II: 15,000 houses leveled, estimated 1,800-5,000 dead, 22,000 immediately exiled.
The county didn't return to Croatian control until January 1998, following three years of UN administration under the Erdut Agreement. What returned was transformed. The Borovo footwear factory that once employed 24,000 workers now employs roughly 1,000. Unemployment remains around 40%—the highest in Croatia. The baroque architecture that made prewar Vukovar one of Yugoslavia's wealthiest towns lies partly reconstructed, partly still bearing shell marks. The water tower, deliberately left in its damaged state, serves as war memorial.
Vukovar-Srijem spans Croatia's easternmost territory, where the Danube forms the Serbian border and the Sava defines the Bosnian boundary. Vinkovci, the county's actual population and economic center at 33,000 inhabitants, largely escaped the destruction that gutted Vukovar. But both cities share the county's postwar trajectory: population that peaked above 230,000 in 1991 fell to under 180,000 by 2011 and continues declining as young people leave for Zagreb or Western Europe.
By 2026, the county faces what all traumatized regions face: whether memory and reconstruction can sustain communities, or whether the damage proves permanent and the young continue leaving.