Former Serbian Renewal Movement leader Vuk Drašković has condemned the growing glorification of Ratko Mladić, warning that Serbia risks crossing a dangerous moral and political line by celebrating a man convicted of genocide and other war crimes.
Drašković described the portrayal of Mladić as a Serbian “knight” and “hero” as “shameful and unforgivable”, arguing that it amounts to celebrating the crimes for which he was convicted.
“Serbia is facing a spiritual abyss,” Drašković said.
He was equally critical of proposals to bury Mladić with Serbia’s highest military and state honors.
According to Drašković, honoring a man sentenced to life imprisonment by an international court for genocide and other war crimes would represent something far greater than a ceremonial decision.
It would, he warned, amount to burying the moral, legal and human foundations of contemporary Serbia itself.
His remarks highlight the growing divide over Mladić’s legacy: while nationalist circles continue to portray the former Bosnian Serb commander as a hero, his victims and critics point to the international court verdict that established his responsibility for some of the gravest crimes committed during the Bosnian war.
For Drašković, the issue is therefore not simply how Serbia chooses to bury Mladić.
It is what Serbia chooses to honor — and what that choice says about the country’s moral reckoning with its past.
