World News
Serbia buries Ratko Mladic with military honours and proposes dissolving parliament on the same day
By Staff Writer | 8 September 2026
Thousands queued at a Belgrade church to file past the coffin of the Bosnian Serb commander convicted of genocide, and soldiers carried it to the grave. The EU said any glorification of war criminals has no place in a candidate country. Hours later the government set an early election in motion, expected for 25 October.
Ratko Mladic was buried in Belgrade on Monday with military honours. He died on 27 August, aged 84, in The Hague, where he was serving a life sentence imposed by the United Nations tribunal that convicted him in 2017 of genocide for the killing of more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys at Srebrenica in July 1995, of crimes over the siege of Sarajevo, and of other war crimes. Thousands of people, many of them army veterans, queued from early morning outside the small Church of St Luke, where his body lay in state with his officer's cap and sabre on the coffin. The head of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Porfirije, led the service, and Serbian army soldiers carried the flag-draped coffin at Topcider cemetery while a military orchestra played. He was buried beside his daughter.
The Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik and Russia's ambassador to Serbia were among those present. Local media reported that the Defence Minister, Bratislav Gasic, and the Justice Minister, Nenad Vujic, joined the crowds outside the church. A state funeral had been mentioned by a minister and then dropped after objections from European governments. The arrangements were formally made by the family, but the government sent an aircraft last week to bring the remains from the Netherlands, six soldiers carried the coffin from the plane, and a military commemoration was held on Saturday at an army venue. Pro-government television carried the funeral live, and free buses were laid on from Bosnia and from towns across Serbia.
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
Statement by the European Union's foreign service, 7 September 2026
Brussels and Belgrade
Serbia has been a candidate for EU membership since 2012, and the EU's statement on Monday said it stood in solidarity with all victims, survivors and their families who suffered from war crimes in the countries of the former Yugoslavia. The enlargement commissioner, Marta Kos, cancelled a planned visit to Serbia in protest.
the glorification surrounding his death is incompatible with the values on which the EU path is built
Marta Kos, European Commissioner for Enlargement
President Aleksandar Vucic did not attend the funeral, citing a scheduled visit by his Uzbek counterpart. He described it as an emotional outpouring that had nothing to do with whether his government approved of it, and said the state was respecting the wishes of the family and ensuring a dignified burial. In Bosnia, the Mothers of Srebrenica association, which represents relatives of the victims, had asked the EU to react before the funeral took place. A woman in Sarajevo whose nine-year-old son was killed during the siege said it was horrible that the funeral was taking place in Belgrade at all.
The election
On the same day the Serbian government proposed dissolving parliament, the procedural first step towards an early parliamentary election. Mr Vucic is expected to set the date formally later this week and has said the vote will probably be held on 25 October. He has said he will resign the presidency to lead his party's list, since he cannot stand for the presidency again after two nearly full terms; a separate early presidential election will follow. Bosnia and Herzegovina votes on 4 October.
The election follows more than a year of street protests that began after the collapse of a concrete canopy at the renovated railway station in Novi Sad on 1 November 2024, which killed 16 people. The student movement that grew out of those protests is expected to field a list including university professors and other public figures. For a readership that deals in construction failure and its consequences, the sequence is worth noting plainly: a station canopy fell, sixteen people died, a protest movement formed around the question of who was accountable for the renovation, and two years later the country is going to an early election. What Monday added was a funeral that the EU has said it will not overlook on the road to membership.