Newsletters
This article was originally written for Türkiye Today’s bi-weekly Balkans newsletter, BalkanLine, in its September 11, 2026 issue. Please make sure you are subscribed to the newsletter by clicking here.
"Hero! Hero!"—that's what a Belgrade crowd chanted last week when the son of a man convicted of genocide asked them to judge his father.
The funeral of war criminal Ratko Mladic was billed as a family affair. It didn't stay one: ministers showed up, soldiers carried the coffin, and a government plane flew the body home.
Now Bosnia has expelled two Serbian diplomats, Brussels is threatening to slow-walk EU accession talks, and a three-decade-old war is suddenly very much a live political issue again.
Mladic, the former commander of the Bosnian Serb Army, died in The Hague on Aug. 27 at the age of 84 while serving a life sentence for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes committed during the 1992-1995 Bosnian War.
He was convicted of crimes that included genocide for his role in the killing of more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys in Srebrenica in July 1995. He was also convicted of the persecution and forcible expulsion of Bosniaks and Croats, the terror campaign against civilians during the siege of Sarajevo and the taking of U.N. peacekeepers hostage.
His death did not alter those judgments.
As U.N. special adviser Chaloka Beyani put it, “The facts established by ICTY do not get extinguished by one’s death.”
Belgrade seemed determined to test that anyway. He was buried in Belgrade on Sept. 7 before thousands of mourners. At least six Serbian ministers attended. Soldiers carried his coffin, while his body had earlier been transported to Serbia on a government plane.
Inside and outside the church, mourners wore shirts bearing his image, waved flags and praised him as a hero. Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic did not attend. He rejected accusations that Serbia glorified Mladic and stressed that the funeral was organized by the family rather than the state.
Yet the scale of official involvement proved difficult to separate from the political message sent by the ceremony.
Justice Minister Nenad Vujic had initially announced “military and state honors” for Mladic before Vucic tempered the decision. Ministers nevertheless attended, soldiers participated and the government provided the aircraft that returned Mladic’s body to Belgrade.
For Bosnia and Herzegovina, the images from Belgrade were not simply another source of diplomatic friction.
Bosnian top diplomat Elmedin Konakovic declared Serbian military attache Milan Dulanovic and intelligence service adviser Darko Maksimovic persona non grata, giving them 48 hours to leave the country.
He also announced steps to reduce diplomatic communication with Serbia to the “lowest possible level,” scale back staffing at Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Embassy in Belgrade and suspend bilateral meetings.
Sarajevo also withdrew its consent to a declaration on good-neighborly relations and regional cooperation that had been due to be signed in Montenegro on Oct. 1.
“They crossed every red line,” Konakovic said.
The reaction was not limited to Sarajevo. Britain summoned Serbia’s charge d’affaires, Türkiye described the use of Mladic’s funeral to deny crimes or portray convicted perpetrators as heroes as “unacceptable,” and a senior U.N. official warned that the public glorification of Mladic undermined accountability, mutual understanding and sustainable peace.
The wounds, in other words, were never quite as distant as three decades might suggest.
But it is Serbia’s relationship with the EU that may give the funeral its most immediate political consequences.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa described the images from Belgrade as “shocking” and said the elements of official support demonstrated a failure to confront a dark chapter of Europe’s recent history.
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said Serbia’s path toward membership required an unequivocal commitment to fundamental European values and historical truth.
The most consequential intervention, however, came from Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos.
Kos cancelled a planned visit to Belgrade over the glorification surrounding Mladic’s funeral and later told Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that Serbia was now “at a crossroads.”
The accession process, she said, requires not only reforms but also confronting the past, genuine reconciliation, respect for the rule of law and a clear strategic orientation.
“We need to assess the extent to which Serbia is still sincere about its European path,” Kos said.
Asked who within the EU should make that assessment, Kos said she would first discuss the issue with von der Leyen.
The timing makes that exchange particularly significant.
Kos said the EU’s report on the bloc’s readiness to accept new members would be completed by the end of September and could then provide a basis for discussion among EU member states in the Council in October.
She nevertheless stressed that she was prepared to “try everything” to keep Serbia on its European path, while making clear that the outcome was also in Serbia’s hands, not only those of its political leadership but also its population. Serbia is due to hold snap parliamentary elections on Oct. 25.
Kos also framed the dispute in terms that reached beyond Serbia’s accession negotiations.
“Confronting the past is one of the most difficult issues we have to deal with in the Western Balkans,” she said.
More than three decades after the Bosnian war, she argued, political elites had a responsibility to “heal the wounds of the past” rather than have everyone “sprinkle new salt into them.”
That warning is no longer purely rhetorical.
In July, the European Commission recommended opening Cluster 3 in Serbia’s accession negotiations after a technical assessment. The matter is now before member states.
Asked whether the funeral could affect that process, Commission spokesperson Guillaume Mercier said those discussions would have to take into account “the latest political developments that we have seen.”
Brussels has not announced formal consequences, and Serbia remains an EU candidate country. But the funeral has moved the politics of memory directly into the discussion over accession.
That is what makes this moment different.
Serbia’s European debate is no longer only about reforms, negotiating clusters or the pace of enlargement. It is also about whether the political treatment of the wars of the 1990s can be reconciled with the values Brussels says membership requires.
Ratko Mladic has been buried.
The dispute over what his legacy means for Serbia, Bosnia and the wider region has not ended. For Belgrade, the unresolved legacy of the 1990s is becoming harder to separate from its European ambitions. Serbia may find that its path toward Europe runs through a past it has yet to fully confront.
Set as preferred source
Set as preferred source
1 min read
1 min read
