In September 2026, Serbia buried Ratko Mladić — a man convicted of genocide by an international tribunal — with full military honors, as thousands gathered to mourn him as a national hero. The ceremony was not merely a farewell to one man but a public declaration about how a society chooses to remember its most painful chapters. Where international justice had rendered its verdict, nationalist memory offered a competing one. The Balkans, it seems, have not yet finished deciding what the 1990s wars meant — or who, in the end, bears their weight.
War criminal Ratko Mladić honored at Serbian funeral despite genocide conviction
Mladić was convicted of orchestrating the Srebrenica massacre and other atrocities that killed thousands during the Bosnian War.