The magazine quotes Donald Trump saying: “The bombing of Serbs, who had been our allies in both world wars, was a big mistake." | AP Photo Trump camp says Serbia apology interview was a hoax "We look forward to receiving a formal retraction and apology from all involved."

Donald Trump’s campaign is accusing a Serbian magazine of fabricating an interview in which the GOP nominee apologizes to Serbia for the 1999 NATO bombing in Yugoslavia.

The magazine Nedeljnik released excerpts from what it says is an interview with Trump conducted via adviser Suzanne Ryder Jaworowski, a Trump senior adviser who is also his campaign manager for the state of Indiana.


The magazine quotes Trump saying: “The bombing of Serbs, who had been our allies in both world wars, was a big mistake. Serbs are very good people. Unfortunately, the Clinton administration brought a lot of harm to them, to all the Balkans, where they created chaos."

Jaworowski said the interview never happened. “There was no Trump interview on Serbia,” she said. “I don’t know where that came from. I never facilitated any kind of interview with a Serbian reporter.”

Later Thursday, the Trump campaign put out a statement calling the interview a hoax and criticizing Newsweek for its own account of the article. "Mr. Trump never gave an interview to the Serbian weekly magazine Nedeljnikas [sic] as falsely reported by the discredited Newsweek, nor was such an interview conducted through our Indiana State Director. This was a hoax and we look forward to receiving a formal retraction and apology from all involved,” said Trump spokesman Jason Miller.

Jaworowski said she recently met a man of Serbian descent at a fundraiser who insisted he was running to be president of the Balkan nation and who had expressed interest in supporting the campaign. She passed his information along, she said, and posited that somehow her exchange with him may have led to what she called the false reports of an interview.

POLITICO's attempts to reach Nedeljnik were unsuccessful.

BuzzFeed News on Thursday quoted Nedeljnik’s managing editor, Marko Prelevic, explaining the origins of the interview: “We established the contact with the Trump campaign through Mr. Vladimir Rajcic, a Serbian-American who is close to some aides of Mr. Trump ... We asked him if we could send over some questions and after a couple of weeks got answers from Suzanne Ryder Jaworowski in an email.”

An apology to Serbia would be controversial as it would align Trump with Russia. President Bill Clinton, who authorized the 1999 bombing campaign as part of a NATO action, defended the strikes as an effort to stop mass killings of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. The Serbians and Russia decried the bombing campaign as an unwarranted act of military aggression.