After a long and contentious trial, Mladic was finally convicted of 10 of 11 charges, including genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes, which got him a life sentence. United Nations appeals judges upheld the convictions in 2021, making his trial the last of a major figure of the Yugoslav wars.

Mladic’s family and Serbian authorities had been warning of his ailing health for months. Just a few days before his death, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic made one final appeal for a humanitarian release, saying that he was “de facto dying.” He pleaded for him to be allowed to die in his country.

“Whether there is a week or five weeks left, it doesn’t matter. They could, just as they waited for Nebojša Pavković to literally arrive two weeks before his death, and then let him into the country, at least to die where he lived and what he fought for,” Vucic said on Aug. 18, referring to the former Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Yugoslavia, who was allowed to die in Serbia last October.

“Why they behave like this and why they do this, I don’t understand anything, to be honest,” Vucic added. “This is not exactly the civilization they have been telling us about for so many years and decades.”

Mladic’s death was met with widespread celebration in the nations of his enemies and victims. Bosnian Minister of Defense Zukan Helez gave one of the most colorful and celebratory obituaries in a Facebook post that reflected the Bosnian Muslim consensus.

“Ratko Mladić has croaked. A convicted perpetrator of genocide, a lifer, and one of the most notorious war criminals Europe has seen since World War II,” he wrote. “The man who left behind Srebrenica, Sarajevo, mass graves, and thousands of ruined lives ended up exactly where he belonged — in The Hague, convicted of genocide and the gravest war crimes.”

“Death brings no forgiveness,” Helez continued. “It does not erase the mass graves. It does not bring back the murdered children. It does not bring back the fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters. All that’s left is shame, a verdict, and a bloody trail of crime.”

Helez concluded with a jab at his ailing state and presumed incontinence, as Mladic had suffered multiple strokes by the time he died.

“PS: Pampers sales might take a sudden hit now that he’s gone,” Helez said.

Polarizing until the end

Mladic was one of, if not the most, reviled figures in non-Serb areas of Bosnia, Croatia, and the wider Western world, even more so than Radovan Karadzic, the former President of Republika Srpska, and former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic. His “Butcher of Bosnia” descriptor was used across the Western press over his leadership of Bosnian Serb forces during the civil war’s two most infamous events: the Siege of Sarajevo and the Srebrenica Massacre.

The exact details following the Bosnian Serb takeover of the Bosnian Muslim enclave of Srebrenica in July 1995 remain highly contentious, but Bosnian and Western estimates hold that 7,000 to 8,000 Bosnian males were killed, either during the battle or in mass extrajudicial executions afterward. Women and young children were separated from the men, and most of the men were never seen again.

The ICTY deemed the massacre a genocide and held Mladic ultimately responsible. The failure of the U.N. to stop the killings remains one of the most controversial moments in its history.

The United States played a leading role in hunting down Mladic after he went on the run in 1995, with the State Department offering a $5 million bounty. The Serbs refused to give him up, and their decision to finally do so in 2011 was highly unpopular. To this day, most Serbs view the ICTY as an illegitimate entity biased against Serbs while letting Bosnian and Croatian war criminals off the hook.

Mladic’s trial lasted 530 days and featured testimonies from 592 witnesses, along with 10,000 pieces of evidence. After he was convicted, Mladic yelled, “Everything you said is pure lies. Shame on you!”

Munira Subasic, the head of Mothers of Srebrenica, whose son and husband were killed by Bosnian Serb forces, was quoted by the Associated Press describing him as a symbol of all the “horrible crimes” that happened during the war.

“Germans had Hitler, Serbs have Mladic,” she said. “There is no difference between the two.”

While viewed with disdain by much of the world, Mladic remains widely hailed as a hero in Serbia and Republika Srpska today. The streets of Serbia’s capital, Belgrade, remain splattered with graffiti featuring the general, praising him as a hero and calling for his freedom. Driving through Serbia’s countryside, he’s often featured in celebratory murals, sometimes beside Karadzic.

Politika, Serbia’s newspaper of record, published a glowing obituary for Mladic, celebrating him as “Eternal Commander of the Army of Republika Srpska.” It was featured at the top of the site on Thursday morning.

It noted that he died “far from his homeland, family, and the people to whom he dedicated his military life. He will be remembered by the Serbian people as a wartime commander and a symbol of the defense of Republika Srpska.”

Vladimir Vukovic, the author of the obituary, said Mladic’s name had become “inseparable” from the creation of the modern Republika Srpska,” which he described as “the greatest victory of the Serbian people in the tragic collapse of Yugoslavia.”

“The Hague did not allow him to return to his country,” Vukovic wrote. “It did not even allow him to spend his last days with his family. But it could not take away his place in the memory of the people whose army he led and whose Republic he defended.”

“General Ratko Mladić now stands before the court of history and before the only infallible court – the court of God,” Vukovic concluded. “May the Lord grant him the Kingdom of Heaven, and may the Serbian people have eternal memory.”

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Outside of Serbia, he was mourned in Russia, Serbia’s longtime ally.

Mladic was one of the last living major leaders of the Yugoslav wars. His immediate superior, Karadzic, is still alive and is currently serving a life sentence in a British prison.