An article by Tatjana Đorđević.
There is an abandoned agricultural warehouse in Kravica, a few kilometres from Srebrenica. There is no memorial plaque outside, nothing to tell a visitor that on 13 and 14 July 1995, between 1,000 and more than 1,300 Bosniak men and boys were killed inside and around this former agricultural cooperative.
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 under the command of General Ratko Mladić. Mladić died on 27 August at the age of 84 in the prison hospital in The Hague, where he was serving a life sentence. In 2021, his conviction for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes became final. His death should have closed one of the darkest chapters of the wars that accompanied the breakup of Yugoslavia. Instead, it demonstrated how politically alive that past remains.
In Serbia and Republika Srpska, politicians, nationalist organisations and parts of the public mourned Mladić as a hero. Memorial gatherings were organised in several cities, while graffiti and banners celebrating him appeared once again in public spaces. Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić criticised the UN International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals for refusing previous requests to release Mladić on health grounds. Serbia also announced that, as a former general, Mladić would be buried with military and state honours. The controversy goes far beyond the funeral of one man.
More than thirty years after the Bosnian war, the case of Ratko Mladić exposes the continuing gap between judicial truth and political memory in the Western Balkans. International courts have established the facts of Srebrenica and Mladić’s responsibility. Yet court verdicts alone have not created a common understanding of the past. This unresolved legacy is particularly important for Serbia, a country that formally remains committed to joining the European Union.
European integration is usually discussed through negotiating chapters, economic reforms, rule-of-law benchmarks and institutional changes. But becoming part of the European political community is also about democratic culture: the ability of institutions and societies to confront established facts, recognise victims and reject the political glorification of those convicted of the gravest crimes. This is where Serbia continues to face a profound contradiction.
Its governments have maintained EU membership as a strategic objective while nationalist narratives about the wars of the 1990s continue to occupy an important place in public life. Rather than disappearing with time, those narratives can be reactivated whenever they become politically useful. Mladić’s death offered another example.
By shifting attention from the crimes for which he was convicted to his treatment by the Hague tribunal, political discourse can transform a convicted war criminal into a victim and Serbia itself into the victim of an allegedly hostile international order. This narrative is not new. For decades, it has helped turn questions of individual criminal responsibility into questions of collective national grievance.
Perhaps more worrying is that the debate is no longer confined to the generation that lived through the wars. Serbia’s young people are divided as well. The student protest movement that has challenged Vučić’s system of power includes many young people demanding accountability, stronger institutions and a more democratic country. Yet nationalist currents are also visible among the younger generation. Following Mladić’s death, some students publicly mourned him, while a large banner displayed on Belgrade’s Branko Bridge declared: “Our freedom lives through your struggle.” Many of those taking part in this debate were not even born when the Bosnian war ended. That is why the politics of memory matters for Serbia’s future. If younger generations inherit the same unresolved narratives, historical revisionism ceases to be simply a legacy of the past. It becomes part of the political culture of the future.
This also presents a challenge for the European Union. The EU has renewed its attention to enlargement, and the Western Balkans have once again become strategically important in a Europe transformed by war in Ukraine and geopolitical competition. Serbia remains essential to the stability and European future of the region. But enlargement cannot be reduced to geopolitical necessity.
A European future for the Western Balkans also requires democratic resilience, functioning institutions, regional cooperation and genuine reconciliation. None of these is easily compatible with the continued public glorification of individuals convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity. Ratko Mladić’s death therefore leaves Serbia with a question that is larger than Mladić himself.
The issue is not whether Serbian society must accept a single interpretation of every aspect of the Yugoslav wars. Democratic societies inevitably debate their history. But such debate must begin with established facts and with a clear distinction between historical discussion and the glorification of crimes. Serbia’s European path will ultimately depend not only on what laws it adopts or negotiating chapters it closes, but also on what kind of political culture it chooses to build.
More than thirty years after Srebrenica, the past is still capable of returning to Serbia’s streets, dividing a new generation and becoming an instrument of contemporary politics.
Ratko Mladić is dead. The more difficult question is whether the political culture that turned him into a hero can finally be left behind.
Further reading
Valigia Blu — Il boia di Srebrenica è morto, la sua mostruosa ideologia si aggira ancora per l’Europa
Osservatorio Balcani Caucaso Transeuropa — Mladić è morto, ma non la sua ideologia