Overview
- The burial took place in Belgrade on Monday after the coffin was displayed at St. Luke's Church and interred at Topčider cemetery with a military guard and honor salutes.
- Thousands of mourners attended the public procession, the coffin was flanked by Serbian soldiers, and government ministers and regional figures such as Milorad Dodik and the Russian ambassador were seen at the funeral.
- State-linked displays extended into sport and media, including a minute of silence and a large portrait of Mladic at the Red Star–Partizan derby, actions that the Mothers of Srebrenica called a celebration of genocide.
- The European Union said the glorification of convicted war criminals contradicts core European values and canceled a scheduled visit by enlargement commissioner Marta Kos in response to the funerary honors.
- Mladic was convicted by the UN tribunal in 2017 and his life sentence was upheld on appeal in 2021 for genocide and other crimes from the 1992–95 Bosnian war, a legal record that sharpens domestic divisions over memory and complicates regional reconciliation.