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What does the commemoration of Genocidal War Criminal Ratko Mladić reveal about Serbia?
On August 27, 2026, inside a UN prison facility in The Hague, Ratko Mladić, convicted and jailed in 2017 by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, died at age 84 from natural causes. He died in the prison’s hospital after having suffered multiple strokes in the past year. In 2022, he was hospitalized because of his declining health, and in 2025 he filed a request to be released as he had “few months left to live,” which was denied multiple times.
Mladić’s corpse was flown back to Serbia on a state flight, accompanied by the Justice Minister Nenad Vujic and other high-ranking military personnel. His coffin was welcomed by an estimated 16,000 mourners at the Serbian Orthodox Church of St. Luke in Belgrade, wrapped with both the Serbian and the Srpska Republic flags—The Srpska Republic is a political entity within the borders of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and its population is made up mainly of ethnic Serbs. The funeral was conducted on Monday, September 7, by the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church (SOC), Patriarch Porfirije, with full military honors and state symbols. Although President Aleksandar Vučić was not present, many other Serbian and Russian officials and Bosnian Serbs from the Republika Srpska were.
Who Was Ratko Mladić
Ratko Mladić was born in 1942 in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. At age 22, he joined the Yugoslav National Army (JNA) and rose through the ranks over his 30-plus-year career.
His legacy was defined by the crimes and atrocities he committed during the bloody Balkan Wars (1992-1995), where more than 100,000 people were killed. He directed the siege of Sarajevo,the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which lasted 1,460 days, making it the longest siege in modern history. 11,500 Bosnian citizens died during the siege, more than half civilians.
In July of 1995, he earned the title of “Butcher of Bosnia” when his forces captured the UN “safe areas” enclaves of Srebrenica and Žepa, where he and his men slaughtered 8000 Bosniaks (Muslim Bosnians), then piled their corpses with bulldozers into mass graves scattered in the surrounding woods. More than 1000 bodies were never identified.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) indicted him in November 1995. He spent the rest of his life on the run in various locations across Serbia and Bosnia, until May 26, 2011, when he was captured by UN forces in Northern Serbia. In 2017, the verdict from the ICTY convicted Mladić on five counts of crimes against humanity, four counts of war crimes and one count of genocide, the first time since the Nuremberg trials that an individual was charged with genocide.
A legitimate private burial, or a state funeral?
The Mothers of Srebrenica, an association that groups relatives of the victims of the genocide, urged the EU to react, warning that his funeral “threatens to become the largest fascist gathering in Europe in the last 70 years.” “The glorification of Genocide is not honor; it’s shame,” they stated. The president of the association, Fazila Efendic, who lost her son, husband, and 22 other relatives, expressed deep concern about the upcoming funeral, and stated: “It will be a mirror into Serbia, for the world to see.”
Relevant figures who attended included the Russian ambassador and the President of Republika Srpska, a federal entity within Bosnia and Herzegovina populated by ethnic Serbs, Milorad Dodik.
During the September 7 funeral processions, Patriarch Porfirije stated that Mladić “Will remain deeply embedded in the memory and prayers of the majority of the Serbian and Orthodox people,” and led a prayer calling for “Ratko to be forgiven for his voluntary and involuntary sins.” The SOC has a history of siding with the Serbian Orthodox during the war, never condemning the Srebrenica genocide, and even speaking against the UN resolution adopted on May 3, 2024 (A/RES/78/282), which condemns any denial and glorification of the Srebrenica genocide. Patriarch Porfirije called those who label the event as genocide “historical revisionists” and argued for morally appropriate funerals for Ratko, saying that the church doesn’t deny funeral services to anyone. He then went a step further, glorifying Ratko’s merits in defending Serbian identity, and never mentioning the victims, alluding only once to them when saying, “While praying for the souls of the deceased, we are praying for all those whose lives were extinguished.”
Vladimir Veljković, a researcher who followed and analyzed the strategic political decisions of the SOC, summarized this in one formula: “The SOC observes history through an ethnophyletist lens in which the Serbian side is the eternal victim…Mladić is not a perpetrator, but a fighter; and the funeral service officiated by the patriarch is not a misunderstanding, but consistency.”
The line between a state funeral and a private celebration was intentionally blurred, even though official state symbolism and numerous public figures were undeniably present. Afterward, the corpse of the war criminal was flown back to the capital on a state plane, accompanied by the Minister of Justice Nenad Vujić, Defense Minister Bratislav Gasic, and the son of the current Serbian President, Danilo Vučić, who also attended the ceremony.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić did not attend the funerals, but he said, “I have spoken with the Mladić Family, and I wish it all passes in a dignified way as it should.” He attributed his absence only to a logistical overlap, as he had previously organized an official visit by Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev to Belgrade.
Reactions from the International Diplomatic Community, and major setback toward the EU-Membership path
The European Union Enlargement Commissioner, Marta Kos, canceled her upcoming visit to Serbia, a candidate for membership since 2012, stating that “the glorification surrounding his death is incompatible with the values on which the EU path is built.” The Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Michael O’Flaherty, urged Serbian authorities to “counter the glorification of convicted war criminals.” In a joint statement, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa described images from Monday’s funeral as “shocking,” stressing that Mladić died while serving a life sentence for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.
A group of 118 Serbian Academic professors sent a letter to Brussels, addressed to von der Leyen, urging her to cancel or postpone her upcoming visit to Belgrade in October 2026, warning that state media would likely frame the event as a display of EU support for the current administration.
Indignation over the ceremony also resonated outside Europe, with Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesperson Oncu Keceli and U.S. House members Greg Murphy and Marc Veasey calling for targeted sanctions against individuals who “threaten Bosnia’s peace and stability or undermine the 1995 Dayton peace deal framework.” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also warned against actions that glorify convicted war criminals.
Anti-Western rhetoric is distancing Serbia from its Balkan neighbors
Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Foreign Minister Elmedin Konakovic warned that Serbian leadership is risking “complete isolation.” On September 8, he declared two figures at Serbia's embassy in Sarajevo, military attaché Milan Dulanovic and intelligence adviser Danko Maksimovic, persona non grata and gave them 48 hours to leave the country. Bosnia also abstained and boycotted signing a memorandum on good neighborly relations and cooperation among the Western Balkan countries, due to be signed in Montenegro on October 1.
Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti also harshly criticized Vučić's political and moral decision to allow and encourage the funerals.
Reactions were mixed in Montenegro, a Balkan nation where ethnic Serbs make up 33% of the population. Montenegro’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed concern for the victims of Mladić and emphasized the need to oppose denial of any means of glorifying war crimes. Conversely, the President of the Montenegrin Parliament, Andrija Mandic, leader of the pro-Serb New Serbian Democracy party, sent condolences to Mladić's family.
Croatian Foreign Minister Gordan Grlić Radman wrote in a statement, “Glorifying this war criminal is truly incompatible with European values.”
The diplomatic clash soon moved to New York. On the first day of the 81st UN General Assembly, Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković condemned the military and state honors granted to Mladić as an insult to his victims and international courts. Denis Bećirović, Chairman of Bosnia's Presidency, went a step further, calling him "the monster Ratko Mladić" and denouncing his "institutional glorification" as an attack on UN values. Vučić's answer came the following day by accusing Croatia of being "proud of its Nazi past", a remark Plenković dismissed.
“A mirror into Serbian Society” and Vučić's political agenda
As the Mothers of Srebrenica defined it, these funerals, beyond being a political statement from the current government, are a mirror of Serbian society. A widespread conviction and narrative in Serbia, supported by state-run media, argues for strong anti-Serb bias among international institutions like the UN or the EU. In a country with many active border disputes with neighboring countries, this conviction fuels ultra-nationalism. The world saw an example of this on the day of Mladić's death, when Red Star Belgrade supporters displayed a large tifo for Mladić before and during a local soccer match; the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) consequently fined the team €90,000.
This was not the first time a convicted war criminal was paid official tributes for his funerals in Serbia. In March 2006, very similar funerals were organized for Slobodan Milošević, the President of Serbia during the Balkan wars, who was convicted of war crimes himself. Vučić allowed this, despite potential backlash, because he calculated that he would gain more from the surge of nationalism than he would lose from Brussels’ criticism.
Timing also matters, as Mladić's death coincides with the start of an election campaign. Vučić resigned as president on September 27, designating Ana Brnabić as acting president until elections are held; Brnabić is one of Vučić's closest and most loyal political allies. After serving as prime minister from 2014 to 2017, Vučić became president and was re-elected. Unable to seek a third term, he strategically resigned early to pursue a return.
But this year, the election outcome is far from certain. A relatively new movement has been gaining momentum: the Student List. Since November 1, 2024, there has been widespread discontent and protest against corruption in the government, following a tragic incident in the train station of Novi Sad, which killed 14 people. The structure was part of a wider campaign of government-built infrastructure projects, often completed ahead of schedule because competitive bidding, design review, and safety inspections were bypassed.
As long as this policy of confrontation by the ever less democratic Serbian government persists, and commemorations of war criminals happen, the Republic of Serbia has no place in the European Union.
The European Union is a community built on the respect of human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, rule of law, and respect for human rights. Until the Serbian leadership and its people undergo a process of adaptation to these principles, this Balkan nation should not and will not become a part of this community.
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