Mladic's Military Funeral Stokes Nationalism Ahead of Serbian Election

Several thousand people lined the streets of Belgrade on Monday to watch the funeral and burial of Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb military commander who died in a prison cell in The Hague while serving a life sentence for genocide. The Serbian Patriarch Porfirije officiated the service himself. Mladic was laid to rest at Topcider Cemetery next to his daughter, who took her own life in 1994. He had requested this burial site in his will.

Informer TV, a broadcaster closely aligned with the government, broadcast the funeral live and called it a "magnificent farewell." The coverage made no mention of the roughly 8,000 Bosniak civilians and prisoners killed by Mladic's forces in Srebrenica in July 1995—the massacre for which he was convicted of genocide. President Aleksandar Vucic did not attend, citing a previously scheduled meeting with Uzbekistan's president. In a statement, Vucic said the burial honored the family's wishes and provided a dignified farewell, not state honors but military ones. When the European Union objected, Vucic dismissed the criticism sharply. "Were we supposed to forbid people from attending, forbid the funeral itself and create dog cemeteries?" he asked, invoking a loaded reference to unmarked graves from World War II. EU Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos canceled a planned visit to Belgrade in response. Vucic called her decision "stupid."

The timing is politically charged. Vucic is expected to call a snap parliamentary election as early as this week, with voting likely on October 25. For the first time in years, his ruling bloc faces a credible threat from a student-led movement that has organized anti-government protests for nearly two years. The movement gained momentum after a canopy collapsed at a newly renovated railway station in Novi Sad in November 2024, killing sixteen people. Prosecutors have opened investigations into possible corruption tied to construction contracts, but no trials have begun. The students have built momentum around demands for rule of law, democracy, and an end to systemic corruption.

Dejan Bursac, a political scientist at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory in Belgrade, sees Mladic's funeral as a calculated move. "Vucic is grasping at every available lifeline," Bursac told Deutsche Welle. "One of those lifelines is Mladic's funeral and the nationalism it can help generate, allowing Vucic to present himself as a patriot while portraying his political opponents as traitors." Many Serbs harbor deep resentment over the outcome of the Yugoslav wars and believe that crimes committed against Serbs during the conflict went largely unpunished. That sentiment, Bursac said, is now being deliberately inflamed and exploited for political gain.

Tanja Topic, a political analyst in Banja Luka in Bosnia and Herzegovina's Serb-majority entity, where Srebrenica is located, observes a similar pattern. "Politics here rests heavily on emotion," she said. "This is an issue around which citizens are mobilized. They forget how difficult their lives are because patriotic fervor takes over." Bosnia and Herzegovina will hold elections on October 4, before Serbia votes.

The student movement has largely avoided public comment on Mladic, the funeral, or wartime crimes on social media. Both Vucic's party and the student-backed electoral list are attempting to function as broad political platforms that appeal across ideological lines. In Serbia, that means neither side can afford to alienate nationalist voters, especially with the race expected to be decided by a narrow margin. The students have calculated that campaigning on rule of law and anti-corruption is sufficient to mobilize their base without directly engaging the nationalist narrative.

The government controls most television stations and major news outlets, many of which publish identical content. Pro-Vucic tabloids have recently targeted anyone who describes Mladic as a war criminal, branding such critics as "professional haters of Serbs" and "traitors." Few Serbs trust opinion polls, but both the ruling party and the student movement are widely assumed to command roughly 40 percent support each. Vucic appeared on television approximately 400 times last year. Political narratives in Serbia shift quickly, and analysts suggest that Mladic's funeral, while useful now, is unlikely to sustain Vucic's campaign momentum all the way to late October. By election day, he will almost certainly need a new issue to rally his supporters.