In Serbia and Republika Srpska, politicians, pro-government media, nationalist organisations and citizens mourned the death of Ratko Mladić, who died on August 27th. Despite his conviction as a war criminal responsible for the Srebrenica genocide, 52 per cent of Serbs in Republika Srpska regard Mladić as a hero according to a survey from last year.

September 4, 2026 –
Tatjana Đorđević
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Graffiti of Ratko Mladić. Photo: Tatjana Đorđević

There is an abandoned agricultural warehouse in Kravica, a few kilometres from Srebrenica. Outside, a starving dog on a chain guards what was once a crime scene. On July 13th and 14th 1995, members of the Bosnian Serb army and police shot and killed between 1,000 and more than 1,300 Bosniak men and boys inside and around this former agricultural cooperative. The youngest victim was only 12. There is no memorial plaque here.

Kravica lies in Republika Srpska, the Serb-majority entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The massacre was one of the first mass executions following the fall of Srebrenica and formed part of the genocide in which more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were killed. The forces responsible were commanded by General Ratko Mladić.

Mladić died on August 27th this year, at the age of 84, after a long illness, in the prison hospital in The Hague, where he was serving a life sentence. The former commander of the Army of Republika Srpska had been definitively convicted in 2021 of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. His death has reopened a question that, after international courts established the facts and handed down their verdicts, should hardly need to be asked: was Ratko Mladić a war criminal or a national hero?

The abandoned farm warehouse in Kravica, one of the sites of Mladić’s genocide. Photo: Tatjana Đorđević

In Serbia and Republika Srpska, the answer remains deeply contested. Politicians, pro-government media, nationalist organisations and citizens mourned his death and celebrated him as a hero. According to a 2025 Valicon survey, 52 per cent of Serbs questioned in Republika Srpska regarded Mladić as a hero. Memorial gatherings were organised in Banja Luka, Doboj, Zvornik, Bratunac and even Srebrenica.

Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Prosecutor’s Office, meanwhile, launched investigations into senior Republika Srpska officials over the glorification of the convicted general, including former Republika Srpska president and current SNSD leader Milorad Dodik.

There should be little ambiguity about the historical record. On July 11th 1995, as his troops entered Srebrenica, Mladić himself declared in front of television cameras: “Here we are, on July 11th 1995, in Serbian Srebrenica. On the eve of another great Serbian holiday, we give this town to the Serbian people. And finally, the time has come to take revenge on the Turks in this region.”

What followed is now part of the judicial record of genocide. Yet Serbia has decided that Mladić should be buried with military and state honours. Justice Minister Nenad Vujić said that because Mladić had been a general, the appropriate protocols would be observed and that Belgrade was prepared to receive his body.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić went further. He attacked the UN International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals in The Hague, which inherited the remaining functions of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, for having refused previous requests to release Mladić on health grounds.

“They did not want the general to die in Serbia, to die where he wanted to,” Vučić said, describing the decision as “uncivilised”. He also recalled that Mladić had wanted to be buried next to his daughter Ana.

Ana Mladić was 23 years old and a promising medical student in Belgrade when she took her own life in March 1994, using her father’s favourite pistol. Her death has remained one of the most tragic episodes in the Mladić family history. Mladić himself never accepted that she had committed suicide, arguing instead that she had been killed by his political enemies or western intelligence services.

There is a bitter contradiction in invoking military honours around a man whose name is inseparable from Srebrenica and the 1,425-day siege of Sarajevo. During his trial in The Hague, Mladić repeatedly provoked victims and survivors rather than confronting the crimes for which he would ultimately be convicted.

But the issue today is larger than Mladić himself. His death has once again revealed the persistence of a political culture in which a convicted perpetrator can be transformed into a victim, and a war criminal into a national symbol. Perhaps this is Mladić’s most disturbing legacy: his ability to survive politically and symbolically not only his conviction, but even his own death. That legacy also reaches a generation that was not yet born when the Bosnian war began.

Serbia’s student protest movement, which has challenged Vučić’s rule for almost two years, is itself divided over Mladić. Many students have condemned him, but nationalist students – including young Serbs from Republika Srpska studying in Belgrade – publicly mourned his death. Graffiti praising Mladić appeared across Belgrade. On Branko’s Bridge, young people unfurled a huge banner bearing his image in military uniform and the words: “Our freedom lives through your struggle.” This division matters because Serbia is approaching one of its most uncertain elections in years.

Vučić has announced early parliamentary elections October 18th or 25th, amid speculation that he could return to government as prime minister. The vote comes after almost two years of protests triggered by the collapse of the railway station canopy in Novi Sad in November 2024, which ultimately killed 16 people.

What began as a demand for accountability over the disaster developed into a broader revolt against corruption, institutional opacity and Vučić’s system of power. A CRTA poll conducted between June 10th and 24th showed how competitive the election could become: among voters who had already made  up their minds, a student-backed list stood at 44.9 per cent, compared with 35.7 per cent for Vučić’s Serbian Progressive Party.

It is here that Mladić’s death moves from the politics of memory into electoral politics. Vučić knows the power of nationalism in Serbia. By shifting attention from the crimes for which Mladić was convicted to the way he was treated in The Hague, he revives a familiar narrative: Serbia as the victim of an unjust West and of international justice.

That message could help mobilise nationalist voters who have moved closer to the protests or who accuse Vučić himself of failing to defend Serbian national interests strongly enough. Mladić’s death therefore gives Vučić an opportunity to return the political debate to terrain he has navigated for decades: nationalism, Kosovo, relations with the West, the wars of the 1990s and the persistent idea of Serbia as a country unfairly accused and humiliated by the international community.

Mladić alone will not determine the election. But in a contest that may be far closer than previous ones, mobilising even part of the nationalist electorate could matter. And this may be the real political significance of Ratko Mladić’s death.

The question is not only how Serbia chooses to bury him, but what it is willing to bury with him: historical revisionism and denial, or the possibility of finally confronting the past. For now, there is little reason for optimism.

More than 30 years after the war, the past is still not simply the past. It can return in an election campaign, divide a new generation and once again become an instrument for political power. Ratko Mladić is dead. The nationalism that made him a hero to so many is not.

Tatjana Đorđević is the chairperson of the Foreign Press Association in Milan and a journalist, writing for Al Jazeera Balkans, BBC News, Portal Novosti and La Stampa.


Aleksandar Vučić, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ratko Mladić, Serbia, Srebrenica