No one had to wait for the regime's "official messengers" to see the government's attitude towards death of Ratko Mladić. It is enough for a man to walk through the streets of Belgrade and everything will be clear to him. The reader knows - we are talking about countless murals and graffiti that they celebrate Mladić as a "Serbian hero".
Aleksandar Vučić personally started that practice. In the radical era, he pasted the inscriptions "Ratko Mladić Boulevard" over the "Zoran Đinđić Boulevard" signs. For a good part of his electorate, the general, sentenced to life imprisonment for genocide and crimes against humanity, still represents "national greatness" today.
How to embarrass the people and the state
How much, Vučić showed again. When the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the resolution in May 2023 declaring July 11 as the International Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Srebrenica Genocide, and condemning the denial of genocide and the glorification of war criminals, the President of Serbia fought with all his might against this document. He went so far as to wrap himself in the flag of Serbia during the voting at the plenary session, and the ministers in Belgrade did the same during the collective viewing of the television broadcast.
The radicals/progressives never missed an opportunity to embarrass the country and the people. Did any of them understand that by opposing the UN Resolution, they are fighting for Mladic's rehabilitation? It is, no worries. And that in the UN, the founder of the Hague Tribunal that convicted Mladić for the genocide in Srebrenica? But what - they were aware of that too.
Photo: Emil VashMladić and Karadžić in Pale
Mladić's myth and reality
But why are Mladic's character and his work so attractive to nationalists and chauvinists? Especially when Milošević, Karadžić and other celebrities from the nineties have long been forgotten?
The point is in the myth that Mladić created about himself, and Milošević, Šešelj and the like pushed with all their might. In short: he presented himself as a soldier, an uncompromising professional, defender and avenger of the Serbs, a general who does not spare the living force...
Of course - he was the opposite. In reality, it was about an obscure warlord steeped in blood and war crimes, permanently intoxicated by Milosevic's pat on the shoulder and the uplifting of his surroundings. He never took any responsibility for anything, nor showed an iota of remorse. His many years of hiding in the "rat canals" showed how much moral and other courage he had.
Photo: Emil VashFormer Commander of the Main Staff of the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS)
How to turn the people into accomplices
But Mladić could always count on radicals/progressives, socialists and a bunch of their followers - open, secretive and often cowardly. Rehabilitating him secretly, they also rehabilitated their own war and political path. Both he and they needed a pagan myth about a heroic general in order to present the entire Serbian people as his and their accomplices.
That is to say that Vučić and his team quietly inspired Mladić's murals, and loudly relativized war crimes and historical revisionism. They could. Controlling ninety percent of the media and constantly normalizing the abnormal, they ruined political and public life.
The only thing certain here is that the recovery will be long. And one of the tasks on that plan will be putting Mladić in his rightful place in history. It will not be close to Generals Mišić or Koča Popović, but also to General Milan Nedić, as he wishes.
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