Serbia gives a war criminal a final tribute at Ratko Mladić’s funeral

The funeral of Ratko Mladić in Belgrade became, in the article’s telling, a public tribute to a man responsible for the murder of tens of thousands of people.

Serbian soldiers carried the former general’s coffin from the Church of Saint Luke in the capital. The ceremony drew senior political figures from Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, including Željka Cvijanović, the Serb member of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s state presidency; Siniša Karan, president of Republika Srpska; Interior Minister Željko Budimir; and Milorad Dodik, the entity’s most powerful politician.

The article sharply condemned the attendance, describing Mladić as a mass murderer, an anti-Muslim figure and a serious criminal. It said Serbia’s political elites had turned the burial into a public act of glorification rather than a private farewell.