On Monday morning, thousands of people came into the Serb Orthodox Church of St Luke in Belgrade. Some were old soldiers in military clothes. Some were young men with flags of Serbia and of Republika Srpska. Some were football fans. The body of Ratko Mladić lay inside the church. His military cap and his sword lay on the coffin, and his medals were next to it. Men in military clothes stood on both sides.
Later, men carried the coffin out of the church and people clapped. The national flag lay over the coffin. Many people walked with it to the Košutnjak graveyard. Hundreds of football fans walked too, and young men carried big pictures of Mladić. Soldiers fired guns and a military orchestra played. Serbian ministers came to the funeral, but the government said before that no ministers would come.
The European Union warned Serbia before the funeral. It said that people must not celebrate men who are guilty of war crimes. The Serbian government does not accept these warnings. The government also does not use the word genocide for Srebrenica. It calls the killing of thousands of people there a “horrific crime”.
Ratko Mladić was born on 12 March 1942 and he died on 27 August 2026, when he was 84 years old. He died in prison in The Hague. In the Bosnian War he was the commander of the Army of Republika Srpska. In 2017 an international court said that he was guilty of ten crimes, and he had to stay in prison for the rest of his life. The court said he was responsible for the attack on the city of Sarajevo and for the killings in Srebrenica.
In July 1995, soldiers under Mladić killed more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys in Srebrenica.
Many Serbs also met in towns in Republika Srpska. Milorad Dodik called the death a “murder” and said that Mladić defended Serbs. Ćamil Duraković is the vice president of Republika Srpska. He was the mayor of Srebrenica before, and he was there when the killings happened. He said the meeting in Zvornik was wrong. He said it was bitter that Mladić lived to be so old, because thousands of other people did not.