After the fall of the western main portion of RSK in 1995 during the Operation Storm this exclave remained the only area in Croatia under the Serb rebel control.

[3] In the villages around Vukovar, numerous protests were organized against the rise of nationalist Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) on the national level, following the politics of Slobodan Milošević in nearby Vojvodina and Serbia.

[10] Following a growth in activities by and support for the SDS in the region throughout the latter part of 1990, they sponsored the founding of a Serbian National Council of Slavonia, Baranja and Western Syrmia at an assembly in Šidski Banovci on January 7, 1991.

[11] Goran Hadžić and Boro Savić were arrested during the Plitvice Lakes incident when they suffered police abuse during their transport to Zagreb where they ended up in prison hospital.

[12] The news of the arrest caused escalation in rural majority Serb villages with violence and minor clashes being reported in Bobota, Borovo, Bršadin and Negoslavci.

[12] Goran Hadžić and Boro Savić were released three days later and on their return to eastern Croatia they became the most prominent leaders of the local Serb Democratic Party.

[15] Slavko Dokmanović decided to leave the SNV and distance himself from the Serb Democratic Party but at the same time he warned that without the intervention of the federal bodies of the Presidency of Yugoslavia and the Yugoslav People's Army he will also join the barricade keepers in his own village.

[15] On 1 of May 1991 elderly Serb resident of Bršadin was killed by his Hungarian neighbour with media reporting that the murderer was a member of HDZ leading to blockade of the D55 road despite victim's family calls against it.

[18] Initially, it was a separate Serb autonomous region (oblast), but it subsequently joined the Republic of Serbian Krajina (RSK) in February 1992.

The Kopački rit natural preserve located near the confluence of Drava and Danube formed a major geographical barrier - there were no road or rail connections between Baranja and the southern parts of the territory, except through Serbia.

Eastern Slavonia is a mostly flat area, with the best type of soil where agriculture is highly developed, particularly on wheat fields, and it also has several forests as well as vineyards.

[21][better source needed] which means that the number of Serbs living there has almost doubled while the general population has decreased War crimes charges brought by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia against Croatian Serb leader in the region, Goran Hadžić, indicate that virtually all Croat and other non-Serb population of the region was either killed, deported or otherwise forcibly removed from the area.

Following the November 1995 Erdut Agreement, it was subsequently controlled by the United Nations Transitional Administration for Eastern Slavonia, Baranja and Western Sirmium.