The funeral of General Ratko Mladić, commander-in-chief in the struggle for the freedom of the Republika Srpska during the wars of the 1990s, brought together in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, both his comrades-in-arms and people who had taken part in the war, as well as many young people who had not even been born during the wars in the territory of the former SFR Yugoslavia.
And once again, as so many times in Serbian history, fact and myth met. And it became clear: Serbs have neither reconciled themselves, nor will they reconcile themselves, with the Western propaganda that was legitimised by the NATO tribunal in The Hague. They came to the memorial service for General Mladić because, after all the victories he won and the suffering he endured, he had crossed to the other side of reality – into tradition.
Among Serbs, history and tradition (sometimes history and myth) are not completely separated; rather, they intertwine, complement one another and together shape collective consciousness. Historical events very often become the basis for the creation of myths, while myths assume the role of preserving historical memory over centuries under foreign rule.
During centuries of Ottoman rule, when the institutions of the Serbian state had been destroyed, the people had no access to written historical sources, textbooks or scholarship. At that time, epic folk poetry took over the role of oral history.
Through a certain mythologisation of historical figures (such as Saint Sava, Tsar Lazar, and Marko Kraljević), the people preserved awareness of their origin, former statehood and Christian faith.
TRADITION: MORAL LESSONS
Oral tradition adapted historical facts so that they would have a greater emotional and moral effect on the listener. Historical victories or defeats were transformed into moral lessons.
Such is the tradition of the Battle of Kosovo: for historians it was a military clash with an unclear outcome (both rulers were killed, and the Serbian state survived for another 70 years), while for gusle singers it was the complete military collapse of the Serbian empire and a conscious sacrifice for a higher goal. For historians, Lazar was a prince, while for the people, in spirit and virtue, he was a tsar. For historians, Vuk Branković resisted the Turks for a long time, while in tradition he became a symbol of betrayal of the Serbian people. And so on – the story is well known.
The tradition of Kosovo and Lazar’s heroes serves as a model of behaviour. It answers the question of how to remain honourable and preserve dignity in moments of suffering. When reality is difficult (occupation, slavery), tradition offers hope. By turning defeat into moral victory, the people found the strength to survive and live to see liberation. Vidovdan narratives connected Serbs in different regions (from Vojvodina, through Šumadija and Bosnia, to Montenegro), creating a unified cultural space before the creation of the modern state.
MLADIĆ: FIRST, HISTORY
History is clear: the Army of Republika Srpska emerged from the dissolution of the Yugoslav People’s Army, inherited its officers, equipment, rules and part of its command culture, but entered a completely different political environment. Instead of a federal state, it had an entity whose borders were disputed, depended on the local economy and assistance from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and carried out mass mobilisation of territorially based reservists, amid continuing disputes between the military and civilian leadership.
The wartime course of the Army of Republika Srpska can be divided into four phases. The first, 1992, was the phase of formation and major operations through which the territory was connected and consolidated, with “Corridor” as the most important example. The second, 1993, represented the peak of military initiative, but also the beginning of open conflict with politics and politicians, as well as with international constraints. The third, 1994, brought some losses of the Serbian advantage: the Muslim-Croat conflict ended, NATO bombed the Serbs for the first time, the Croatian army grew stronger, and Belgrade intensified pressure to end the war, regardless of the maximum objectives of the struggle for the freedom of Serbs on the other side of the Drina. The fourth, 1995, included the final offensive successes in the eastern enclaves, the crime (later interpreted as “genocide”) against prisoners from Srebrenica, the collapse of Krajina, NATO air strikes, major territorial losses and the transition to a peace process.
Mladić’s personal career followed the same path. In the Yugoslav People’s Army he was a disciplined, highly rated officer who advanced through education and command duties. In Knin he became a wartime commander and discovered the power of direct personal authority. In the Army of Republika Srpska that style reached its peak: he was not merely a chief of staff in the rear, but travelled constantly, negotiated, spoke in the Assembly and intervened on the fronts. It is difficult to separate the institutional authority of the army from his personal authority. That is why attempts to remove him turned into political crises.
Ratko Mladić’s working notebooks show how much time he spent in meetings with international generals, politicians, businessmen, local leaders, corps commanders and representatives of Belgrade. War was not a sequence of great battles but a continuous exchange of demands for ammunition, fuel, personnel, medical supplies, roads, repairs, transport, rotation and replacement.
He carried all of this on his shoulders – and fought relentlessly.
The war, of course, cannot be understood in isolation from the international position of the Serbs at the end of the 20th century. UNPROFOR was not merely a peacekeeping mission but a constant participant in negotiations, deployments, protected zones and arms control. From 1994 NATO became a direct force – a participant in the war. The United States, Russia, Serbia, Croatia and European states acted through different channels. For Mladić, this external factor was largely an unjust intervention on behalf of his opponents.
THE MLADIĆ MYTH
The myth of Ratko Mladić is one of the most controversial phenomena in the post-Yugoslav space, around which completely opposing narratives exist. While part of the public in Republika Srpska and Serbia celebrates him as a hero, protector of the Serbian people and skilful commander, for the Hague Tribunal, Bosniak, Croat and “pro-European oriented” Serbian public he is a war criminal responsible for the gravest violations of humanitarian law, including genocide in Srebrenica.
Among Serbs, especially during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in the years that followed, a cult of Mladić was built as that of an exceptional professional and soldier who prevented a repetition of the suffering of Serbs in the Second World War. He, supporters say, did not defend political ideologies, but the bare survival of the people in the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina. This perception was further reinforced by his long refusal to surrender to the Hague Tribunal, which in the eyes of his supporters was an act of resistance to Western injustice.
The Hague has a different, NATO version of the story. In order to show Muslims how much they love them (and they do not love them in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan or Palestine), NATO strategists chose to protect Bosniak “multiculturalism” under Alija Izetbegović’s green flag, and to demonise the Serbs and Mladić. That is why The Hague gradually killed him politically as well. And, of course, it sided with all the Serbian enemies.
The European Union cannot reconcile itself with the fact that a large part of the Serbs do not agree with its, that is, NATO’s, narrative about Mladić. Serbian tradition versus the NATO-EU myth – that is what is at issue.
IN CONTRADICTION WITH FUNDAMENTAL EUROPEAN VALUES
Or, to put it in the official language, supposedly “objective”: relations between the European Union and Serbia found themselves in a deep crisis in September 2026 following the death and funeral of the former commander of the Army of Republika Srpska and, according to the official EU narrative, convicted war criminal Ratko Mladić.
Mladić died on 27 August 2026 in a prison hospital in The Hague at the age of 84, and his funeral on 7 September at Topčider Cemetery in Belgrade, with “semi-state” and “semi-military” honours, as well as the presence of certain senior state officials, triggered an avalanche of harsh condemnation from Brussels and, as they put it, “seriously endangered Serbia’s European integration” (which, believe it or not, has lasted since 2000, and of which, as we all know, there will be nothing except perhaps in some caricature-like colonial form).
Official Brussels reacted “unusually harshly”, stressing that the actions of Belgrade are in complete contradiction with fundamental European values.
KNOWN NAMES
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President António Costa described the scenes at the funeral as “shocking”. They stressed that elements of official state support and the presence of ministers from the Government of Serbia are worthy of condemnation, because they show a failure to come to terms with the past.
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas stated that the public glorification of a convicted war criminal is an insult to the victims and their families, adding that there is no place in Europe for historical revisionism. The European External Action Service issued an official statement recalling that Mladić was convicted of genocide in Srebrenica and the gravest crimes against humanity.
EU Enlargement Commissioner, the notorious Marta Kos (a Slovenian, of whom it is claimed that her surname matches the name of Tito’s service for which she worked), cancelled a planned visit to Serbia in protest, after previously warning that the organisation of the farewell would be a key “test for Serbia”.
The European Parliament rapporteur for Serbia, Tonino Picula, a Croatian patriot of “Flash” and “Storm”, said that Serbia cannot claim that the EU is its strategic goal while supporting the glorification of war criminals. It was also announced that the European Parliament might launch an urgent debate on Serbia’s status.
FROM STALEMATE TO STALEMATE
The events surrounding Mladić’s funeral therefore directly affect the negotiating process between Belgrade and Brussels, which has already been at a standstill for years.
European Commission spokesperson Guillaume Mercier confirmed that talks are currently being held with the member states on opening Cluster Three, but that these political developments will directly affect the member states’ decision, which could, perhaps, oh and ah, mean a new blockade.
NGO analysts and European officials assess that Serbia, by refusing to align with EU foreign policy (above all towards Russia) and by openly glorifying protagonists of the wars of the 1990s, is moving further and further away from European standards.
The crisis caused by this event, together with Iceland’s simultaneous decision to completely abandon negotiations with the Union, has allegedly prompted Brussels to launch serious debates about changing its approach to the Western Balkans.
And so on and so forth. Ad nauseam.
And all of this is logical. The story of the Serbs as criminals and of “genocide in Srebrenica” is a constitutive myth of the contemporary European Union, which built itself by dismantling SFR Yugoslavia, and which projected its own genocidal character onto the “damned others”, the Serbs, whom, as the Croats would say, are “Byzantine degenerates”, “schismatics”, who never accepted papal Europe as the measure and test of their history and present.
MYTHOLOGISATION OF SERBIAN GUILT – “THE RISEN LAZAR”
Here is one example.
The writer Sylvie Matton, born in the land of Montesquieu and Voltaire, devoted no fewer than two books to the story of the genocidal Serbs and Srebrenica – the novel “Oceania and Barbarians” and the monograph “Srebrenica – Foretold Genocide” (the novel was published in 2003, the monograph two years later). To reach the “genocidal” Serbs of 1995, she began, in her “historical study”, with the Battle of Kosovo, in which the Serbs were a “marginal force” (according to her, there were more Vlach, Albanian, Hungarian, Croatian and even Frankish knights). Serbs, says Sylvie, although marginal in the battle of 1389, nevertheless waited six centuries to take revenge on Muslims because of Kosovo, and this became possible when a new messiah appeared, Slobodan Milošević, “the risen Lazar”, whom the Serbian Orthodox Church also promoted. In Bosnia, “the risen Lazar” is Ratko Mladić, “who will avenge the Serbian people with the enemy’s blood (…) In the mass slaughter of disarmed men in Srebrenica Mladić knows that no political pressure will be able to prevent him from enjoying his historical revenge”.
Sylvie Matton was a great admirer of Naser Orić, whom she regarded as a true hero of the war against the bloodthirsty Serbs, and she accuses the “international community”, including her own France, of failing to stop the genocidal descendants of Lazar in time.
THE WORK OF A GUILTY CONSCIENCE
As with every myth, certain exaggerations were also possible: thus Sylvie Matton describes the suffering of Bosniaks in the Omarska camp, where, instead of water, the Serbs gave Muslim prisoners glasses containing liquid hallucinogenic drugs, and then, when madness broke out in the barracks, threw smoke bombs and fired shots to calm them down. During the Orthodox celebration of Petrovdan, the Serbs allegedly burned their prisoners alive, just as the Inquisition once burned Joan of Arc (right?).
And none of that would have happened if it were not for the “Kosovo myth”, so Islamophobic.
Sylvie Matton and those like her, those who today emerge from EU-stashism, which reconciles itself with Jasenovac, “Flash” and “Storm”, invent the myths of the “bloody executioner” Mladić and Srebrenica as worse than Auschwitz because their consciences are unclean.
And they are unclean because they belong to a civilisation that killed “lower races” in order to achieve its predatory aims. They need to prove that their ancestors and they themselves have nothing to do with evil, but that pure evil lies with the culture that refused to kneel before Europe’s imperial power, straining to break the East in crusades to the East, from the pope, through Napoleon and Hitler, to NATO.
The entire Hague tribunal, which convicted Ratko Mladić, was constituted with that intention.
FROM THE HEART OF DARKNESS
“Heart of Darkness” is a novella by the Polish-British writer Joseph Conrad, published in 1899. The main character, the experienced sailor Charles Marlow, recounts to his friends his journey into the interior of Africa. As captain of a steamboat belonging to a Belgian trading company, his task was to sail up a great river (the Congo) in search of a successful ivory trader, Kurtz. Arriving at a remote station, Marlow finds Kurtz, who has gone completely mad and set himself up as a deity among the local population, leaving behind a famous record and final words: “The horror! The horror!”. Kurtz had consolidated his power through immense fear and unprecedented crimes against the natives, whose heads he placed on stakes.
A book by Sven Lindqvist, “Exterminate All the Brutes”, also appeared in Serbian, dealing with the roots of European genocides against “savage” peoples and civilisations. He seeks the real foundations of Conrad’s novel, and describes them mercilessly and clearly.
Lindqvist’s sharpest thesis is that the Holocaust cannot be understood if it is completely separated from the long history of European imperial violence: the step from mass murder to genocide became possible when antisemitism joined with a colonial tradition of extermination.
Conrad simply was not a prophet of future camps, but a writer describing the genocides of his time. Europe had already developed in the Congo, Tasmania, America, Africa and Australia a practice of destroying peoples and a language used to justify it. Nazism brought many of those elements back to Europe.
Let us begin with the word “brutes”. When people are called brutes, they no longer have to be treated as human beings. “Exterminate all the brutes” is therefore not merely Kurtz’s madness, but a summary of the European habit of placing subjected peoples outside full humanity. An African, an Indian, a Tasmanian or another subjected person becomes something that can be removed.
PATHS OF EXTERMINATION: FROM NATIVES TO EUROPEANS
Extermination was not hatred without benefit, but a method of conquering space. Tasmanians disappeared when their living space became land for sheep and settlers. The Herero people disappeared when their grazing lands were handed over to German colonists. Native Americans in North America disappeared when their land became the object of European settlement. The lower race is the one standing on land that the stronger one wants.
A people that does not produce the famous capitalist “surplus value” has no right to exist – the native has a right to life only when working in the service of the superior race. The same logic later appears in Nazi language about “useless eaters”: people who consume food in a space intended for another population.
Reservations, camps and ghettos are not the same, but they share a related spatial logic: people are compressed into a space where life can no longer be sustained. If feeding is stopped, they “die on their own”. If they do not die quickly enough, accelerating death can be presented as a practical measure.
From Quivie through Darwin to racial theorists, the extinction of species becomes a racial philosophy of history. But Lindqvist always returns the matter to the concrete story: peoples did not disappear because nature wanted it, but because they were exposed to disease, hunger, weapons, forced labour and the destruction of social order.
That is why Lebensraum is crucial. Ratzel connects biology and geography: life expands, space is limited, the struggle for life is a struggle for space. Hitler takes over this theory in political form. Soviet space becomes German colonial land, and its inhabitants become obstacles, labour or surplus.
Lindqvist therefore interprets Hitler’s war against Russia as a colonial war. Ukraine and the Volga are imagined as Europe’s granary, while the Slavic population is treated as future labour. There must be no Jews, and millions of Slavs will disappear. Nazism applied in Europe a logic that had long been practised in the colonies.
This needs to be covered up: we, the Europeans, are not the criminals, those Orthodox Serbs are. Lazar and Obilić taught them to slaughter. But NATO, through The Hague, stopped them.
THE SERBS ARE NAZIS, SAYS THE HAGUE
Serbs were sentenced to more than a thousand years of imprisonment by the Hague Tribunal (including numerous life sentences), making up a large majority of all sentences handed down by this court. Serbian defendants had by far the highest conviction rate compared with defendants from other “peoples and nationalities”. A large number of Serbian indictees, including former president of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milošević, died in the detention unit in Scheveningen before a final verdict was delivered.
Particular anger and a sense of injustice in the Serbian public were caused by final acquittals of senior military and political leaders from other warring sides.
Croatian generals Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markač, after being convicted at first instance, were acquitted of all charges of crimes during Operation “Storm” on appeal, which was a NATO amnesty for the ethnic cleansing of the Serbian population of the Knin Krajina, Lika, Kordun, Banija, Slavonia and Srem regions. The commander of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina forces in Srebrenica was acquitted of responsibility for crimes against Serbian civilians in Podrinje during 1992 and 1993. Former KLA commander Ramush Haradinaj was acquitted of charges due, as stated, to a “lack of evidence”, while the proceedings were accompanied by the deaths and intimidation of key prosecution witnesses.
The doctrine of Joint Criminal Enterprise was applied exclusively to the Serbian military and political leadership in order to prove a planned operation by Belgrade and Pale that carried out “genocide” against the “non-Serb population”. There was no Croatian, Bosniak-Muslim or Albanian criminal joint enterprise against the Serbs – of course… Less than 4% of total prison sentences concern crimes committed against Serbs.
Thus the Serbs are the sole or main culprits for the wars of the 1990s. This is also contributed to by the tribunal’s decision not to deal with investigating the NATO bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1999, despite numerous reports of civilian casualties and the use of prohibited means.
THE HONEST WEST ON THE HAGUE
Not everyone in the West sold themselves and surrendered to lies. Not everyone’s conscience was burned away. Western critics of the Hague Tribunal include a broad group of respected lawyers, philosophers, political scientists, journalists and intellectuals who, despite the official support of Western NATO governments for this court, publicly challenged its legitimacy, impartiality and methodology. Their criticism is generally not based on denying anyone’s – of course, including Serbian – war crimes, but on arguments that the court functioned as a tool of geopolitical domination by the United States and NATO, violating fundamental principles of international law.
Noam Chomsky often emphasised that the Hague Tribunal was an example of “selective justice” and a tool of Western imperialism. He stressed that the court would never prosecute leaders of Western countries for their crimes.
British historian John Laughland, author of the book “Travesty: The Trial of Slobodan Milošević and the Corruption of International Law”, examined the court’s legal structure in detail, arguing that the Tribunal was illegally established by the UN Security Council and used “retroactive law”.
Canadian professor of international law Michael Mandel wrote the book “How America Gets Away with Murder: Illegal Wars, Collateral Damage and Crimes Against Humanity”. He formally filed a complaint with the Tribunal against NATO leaders over the bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1999, which was rejected by the prosecutor at the time, Louise Arbour. Mandel concluded that the “kangaroo court” in The Hague was created to amnesty NATO criminals.
American economist and media analyst Edward Herman wrote numerous analyses in which he described the Hague Tribunal as a “political weapon” of the United States constructed to justify military interventions in the Balkans.
Danish lawyer and former judge of the Hague Tribunal itself, Frederik Harhoff, in a private letter that became public accused the then president of the court, American Theodore Meron, of pressuring judges to acquit certain senior officers at the direction of the United States and Israel so as not to establish a precedent of military responsibility that could later affect their armed forces.
LAWLESSNESS IN ACTION
Simply and plainly: the UN Security Council had no legal right to establish a court. Under the UN Charter, the Security Council is an executive body, not a judicial one, and therefore has no mandate to create courts.
Despite public evidence of civilian casualties during the NATO bombing in 1999 (the use of cluster bombs, the bombing of RTS, trains and marketplaces), the Tribunal refused to open an official investigation against the leaders of the Alliance.
Unlike traditional national courts, the Hague Tribunal had the right to amend its own Rules of Procedure and Evidence. These rules were changed dozens of times during the court’s operation, which according to critics enabled the prosecution to adapt the rules so as to make it easier to convict certain individuals (for example, by introducing a broad interpretation of Joint Criminal Enterprise).
And that is it: Serbs, as the “little Russians” of the Balkans, were condemned to disappear even before the NATO campaign against Russia itself began. Serbs had no right to rebel and defend themselves. Whoever had been in Ratko Mladić’s place would have ended up like Ratko Mladić.
RATKO MLADIĆ IN A (PREJUDGED) WAR
According to historian Bojan Dimitrijević, who wrote an extensive study of General Mladić and the Army of Republika Srpska, Mladić as a commander was characterised by initiative, a constant presence on the front line, reliance on artillery and armoured superiority, rapid decision-making, strong personal authority and the conviction that passivity is paid for with the loss of territory. A commander accustomed to resolving crises personally found it difficult to accept the limitations of political leadership, international mediators or slower staff procedures. He knew he was not commanding an ordinary war: every major civilian casualty could affect sanctions, diplomatic decisions and the status of one side in international public opinion. Mladić, trained for the classic command of large ground formations, had to act in a war in which a television image and a UN statement could have a strategic effect comparable to the result of an operation.
And he fought, fully aware in advance that his head was on the block.
THE ROAD TO HISTORICAL TRUTH
In the book “The Right to History” by historians Miloš Ković and Draga Mastilović, their expert testimony before the court in The Hague is presented in connection with the case of General Ratko Mladić. In their view, the main problem with the prosecution’s expert analyses, which, among other things, served to wrongly convict Mladić, was not that they spoke about Serbian crimes, political responsibility or military strategy. The problem is that certain facts were selected and connected in such a way as to produce a teleological picture: already in the early political moves of 1990 and 1991, the alleged final outcome of the war is discernible, and every later event is interpreted as the fulfilment of an already existing plan to create “Greater Serbia”. Ković and Mastilović oppose this with the historiographical requirement of contingency. Political actors act under conditions of uncertainty, respond to the actions of opponents, change goals and assessments, accept and reject peace plans, suffer military defeats and international pressure. If all of that is removed, history becomes a retrospectively assembled indictment. Because, according to Ković and Mastilović, “understanding must take priority over indignation”. This does not mean moral indifference towards mass crimes. Moral and legal judgement must be separated, on the one hand, from historical explanation, on the other. A historian may regard an act as a crime, but must still examine who knew what, and when, what alternatives existed, what the other sides were doing, and to what extent a particular decision was a consequence of previous events.
To arrive at the truth, every side must be heard.
THE RIGHT TO HISTORY
Konstantin Leontiev, the famous Russian philosopher, in his study “Byzantism and Slavdom”, gives us a lesson: “School, verse, and a multitude of articles and novels have all taught us from early childhood to read with thrilled enthusiasm about Marathon, Salamis and Plataea and, sympathising with all our hearts with our Hellenic republicans, to look upon the Persians almost with hatred and contempt. I remember how I happened to read (and in whom? – in Herzen!) that the Persian nobles themselves threw themselves into the sea to lighten the ship and save Xerxes, that they came one by one to the emperor and bowed to him before jumping from the deck… I remember that, when I read this, I reflected and said to myself: Herzen is right to call it the Persian Thermopylae. It is more terrible and much more magnificent than Thermopylae! It proves the power of an idea, the power of conviction greater than that of Leonidas’ companions, because it is easier to lay down one’s life in the heat of battle than deliberately and cold-bloodedly, without any coercion, to decide on suicide for religious-state purposes! From that moment, I remember, I began to look at Persia differently from the way poetry, school and most historical writings had taught me.”
What does Konstantin Leontiev’s statement mean? It means that every people has the right to its own history. And that Serbs should not dream of giving up their truth about the Patriotic War in Bosnia and Herzegovina, nor of giving up their own interpretation of the heroism of General Mladić. No, this does not mean denying anyone’s, including Serbian, crimes: it simply means that we remain true to ourselves on our own ground.
For, as Gilbert Chesterton said, those who go to war do not go because they hate those in front of them but because they love those behind them. The late Serbian military commander Ratko Mladić demonstrated this. In life and in death.
May God rest his soul!
