The European Union has criticized the Serbian government after Ratko Mladic, a convicted war criminal, was given a funeral with full military honors on Sept. 7.
Mladic died in U.N. custody on Aug. 27, aged 84, while serving a life sentence for war crimes in Bosnia-Herzegovina during the 1992–1995 civil war.
He had been the Bosnian Serb commander and was convicted of killing thousands of Bosnian Muslims as part of a campaign of ethnic cleansing.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Sept. 8 that she was dismayed by images from Mladic’s funeral in Belgrade, and said it could undermine Serbia’s hopes of joining the bloc.
Serbia Failing to Confront ‘Dark Chapter’
“The elements of official support and the presence of some senior Serbian officials at the funeral are deeply regrettable,” Von der Leyen said in a post on X.
“They demonstrate a failure to confront a dark chapter in Europe’s recent history and contradict the values underpinning Serbia’s path towards the European Union.”
Von der Leyen’s X post was repeated, word for word, by European Council President Antonio Costa.
The head of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Porfirije, led Mladic’s funeral service at St. Luka’s Church in Belgrade, and Serbian army soldiers carried Mladic’s coffin, which was draped with the Serbian flag, to the cemetery.
Mladic was nicknamed the “Butcher of Bosnia” in the 1990s, but he is regarded by many Serbs as a national hero.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic described the funeral as an “emotional outpouring.”
While Vucic did not attend the funeral, his son Danilo did, along with Serbian justice minister Nenad Vujic, Russian ambassador to Serbia Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko, and Bosnian Serb nationalist leader Milorad Dodik.
Dodik, who was forcibly removed in August 2025 as president of the Republika Srpska—the Serb-run half of Bosnia and Herzegovina—has frequently called for it to break away and join neighboring Serbia.
Vucic, a Serbian nationalist who served under former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, has tried in recent years to sail a more moderate course, in an attempt to join the EU. But he maintains good relations with Russia and China.
The Serbian government on Sept. 7 proposed dissolving parliament, setting in motion a procedure for scheduling an early parliamentary election that could see Vucic become prime minister.
Vucic is expected to formally set a date for the election later this week, with Oct. 25 being tipped as the likely polling day.
The European Union issued a statement on Sept. 7, in which it said the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia were among Europe’s darkest moments in recent history.
People line up to pay their respects to former Bosnian Serb army commander Ratko Mladic—whose image is embossed on Serbian flags—at the St. Luka Church, in Belgrade, Serbia, on Sept. 7, 2026. Marko Drobnjakovic/AP
“Ratko Mladic was a convicted war criminal who had committed war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity. He died while serving a life sentence for crimes against humanity and the genocide in Srebrenica,” the statement said.
“The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia sentenced him to life imprisonment in 2017, describing his crimes as among the most heinous crimes known to humankind. Any glorification of war criminals, genocide denial and revisionism contradict the most fundamental European values and have no place in the EU or in EU candidate countries.
“Reconciliation and good neighbourly relations in Western Balkans remain central to building a shared future.”
Serbia is one of 10 countries that are in an accession process, hoping to join the EU in the next few years.
Two other former Yugoslav republics—North Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina—are in the queue, along with Montenegro and Kosovo, which both broke away from Serbia, in 2006 and 2008, respectively.
Serbia refuses to recognize the independence of Kosovo, which is majority ethnic Albanian.
Kosovo Says Serbia Not ‘Normal Country’
In a Sept. 8 post on X, Kosovo’s chief negotiator with the EU, Jeton Zulfaj, said it was not possible for Kosovo to normalize relations with Serbia because the latter was not a “normal country.”
Zulfaj said that for Serbia to become a normal and democratic society, it needed to face up to past crimes and accept responsibility, “review history books full of lies and hatred for the neighbours that poison children,” and stop using the Serbian Orthodox Church to “sanctify convicted war criminals.”
Last week, Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said that if Serbia held a state funeral for Mladic—who also committed crimes against Bosnian Croats—Belgrade would be sending a signal to the EU.
“It is as if they are closing the doors to the European Union for themselves,” Plenkovic said, according to Croatian state-owned media outlet HRT.
The November 1995 Dayton Agreement ended more than three years of civil war in the former Yugoslav republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which killed 100,000 people.
The agreement maintained the single state of Bosnia and Herzegovina but divided it into the ethnic Serb Republic—Republika Srpska—and a Muslim-Croat-populated Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
In November 2025, Ron Slye, a professor of law at Seattle University, told The Epoch Times that Russian President Vladimir Putin saw Moscow as having a strategic interest in the Western Balkans and “is looking to unbalance, destabilize the West or Europe, and ... the former Yugoslavia would be one part of that.”
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
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