Overview
- Serbian state TV RTS announced that Ratko Mladic died on Thursday, August 27, 2026, while held in a United Nations detention/hospital unit in The Hague.
- The UN Residual Mechanism had days earlier rejected requests from Mladic’s family and the Serbian government to transfer him to a Belgrade military hospital after months of serious illness.
- Mladic’s son, Darko Mladic, accused prison medical staff of having stopped care and called his father’s decline a “silent assassination,” a claim reported by multiple outlets and likely to trigger official scrutiny.
- International courts convicted Mladic in 2017 of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity for acts including the 1995 Srebrenica massacre; his life sentence was confirmed on appeal in 2021.
- His death closes a long chapter of international justice but is expected to inflame divided memories in Serbia and Bosnia, affect commemorations of Srebrenica survivors, and shape regional politics in the coming days.