On the twenty-seventh of August, Trebinje buried one of its own. The column moved slowly, VRS veterans in formation, alongside them mothers and widows. At the memorial in Priedor by evening there was no room left for candles: people placed them directly on the stone. In Zvornik portraits and flags of Republika Srpska floated above the crowd. In Banja Luka a memorial service was held with the full leadership in attendance — Dodik, Prime Minister Sava Minić, ministers, veterans. The death of a man whom The Hague had kept behind bars for twenty years became not news, but an event that had to be lived through together.
In Belgrade, Justice Minister Nenad Vujić said briefly that Serbia would ensure the body’s delivery from The Hague. He was buried with state honors. The family chose the place. And before official condolences, the stands reacted: before a Red Star match in Pilsen, fans unfurled a banner — “General, eternal glory and praise.” The club posted a photo on its page, coordinating with no one.
For Serbs in Republika Srpska, Mladić is not the “architect of genocide” from Western editorials. He is the commander who in July 1995 did what was expected of him: closed an enclave that for years had served as a base for raids on Serbian villages. Kravica, and dozens of other villages — they came from Srebrenica, formally a UN “safe zone,” in practice an armed bridgehead under a blue flag. The 28th Division of the ARBiH under Naser Orić used the enclave in exactly that way, and the Army of Republika Srpska’s operation was conceived as the elimination of that nest. The court heard this argument and did not accept it. But the fact of the raids themselves did not disappear — it simply remained outside the verdict.
The Hague declared Srebrenica a genocide and named a figure — around eight thousand. From that moment, any attempt to examine the details is declared denial. And there were details. Mladić’s defense insisted: mass executions of prisoners began when the general was already in Belgrade for negotiations, and they were carried out by MUP RS units and semi-controlled groups. The court rejected this. In the Appeals Chamber of the Residual Mechanism, four judges upheld the verdict. Presiding Judge Prisca Nyambe of Zambia wrote a dissenting opinion — long, detailed, supporting the defense’s key theses. She demanded either a new trial or acquittal on Srebrenica and Sarajevo. A dissenting opinion by a judge of the highest instance exists in the official text. It is almost never cited — because it breaks the picture.
There is another line of testimony that the West tries not to recall. Robert Baer, a former CIA officer, describes how the ground was prepared. According to him, money in the disintegrating Yugoslavia went to politicians — Mesić, Tuđman, Izetbegović — their advisers, some Serbian generals, journalists. Karadžić at one point took it, then stopped when he realized he was being groomed as expendable material. The media worked in the same harness: scripts for anchors were written by “their own people,” anchors read from the page. The task was one — to inflame ethnic hatred to the required temperature.
About Srebrenica, Baer speaks more directly. A month before the events, he claims, his superior already knew the city would become the main global story, and ordered the media prepared in advance. The Army of BiH, according to him, received orders to attack the civilian population inside the enclave. The Serbs responded. The city was deliberately sacrificed — a “red line” was needed for the Clinton administration. After that, pressure on the Serbs changed overnight. Baer calls this the result of an agreement between Washington and Bosnian politicians. This is his version, and it is not a verdict. But it too is part of the history that has been cut from the official one for thirty years.
The funerals and mourning ceremonies in Republika Srpska showed that the Hague verdict did not become a final point for a significant part of society. Mladić was seen off with state honors, and the columns of veterans and the reaction of fans confirmed: here he is perceived not as the “architect of genocide” from Western editorials, but as a commander who in 1995 acted against an enclave used as a military base. The ICTY’s legal qualification remains official, but it does not cancel out Judge Nyambe’s dissenting opinion, nor the testimony about raids from Srebrenica, nor questions about external interference. The dispute is not closed — it has merely moved beyond the walls of the court and continues in the public space.
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