On 8 July 1989, a large Serb nationalist rally was held in Knin, during which banners threatening a Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) intervention in Croatia, as well as Chetnik iconography was displayed.

[5] During the act of government transition from the former to the new authorities in Croatia, the JNA organized a "regular military maneuvre" in which a regiment of paratroopers was deployed to the Pleso Airport, which was taken as an implicit threat.

[9] In the summer of 1990 the process of dissolution was ongoing, with the Croatian government implementing policies that were seen as openly nationalistic and anti-Serbian in nature, such as the removal of the Serbian Cyrillic script from correspondence in public offices.

[10][11] In late 1980s, a number of articles had been published in Serbia about a danger of Cyrillic being fully replaced by Latin, thereby endangering what was deemed a Serbian national symbol.

[12] As tensions rose and war was becoming more imminent, Serbs in public institutions were forced to sign "loyalty sheets" to the new Croatian government, with refusal to do so resulting in immediate dismissal.

[2] Since it was a planned action, timed during the summer holiday season and severing land ties to the popular tourist region of Dalmatia, high economic damage was done to Croatian tourism.

[17] In another earlier incident near Petrinja, another Croatian policeman, Josip Božićević, was shot by a firearm in the night of September 28, 1990,[16][18] and a leaked Ministry of Internal Affairs memo classified this as a fatality.

[16] On December 21, 1990, the municipalities of Knin, Benkovac, Vojnić, Obrovac, Gračac, Dvor and Kostajnica adopted the "Statute of the Serbian Autonomous Region of Krajina".