How Ratko Mladić made "The Flash" and "The Storm" possible

"The direction of Potočari and Bratunac! Move ahead of me, come on. Move forward, and you will greet me when we arrive in Bratunac... Move, take advantage of this panic among the Turks. God willing, let's be in the center of Goražde soon! Here we are on July 11 in Serbian Srebrenica. On the eve of another great Serbian holiday, we present this city to the Serbian people, and finally the moment has come to take revenge on the Turks in this area after the revolt against the dahi", the sentence was uttered in 1995 into the camera of the cameraman of the Main Staff of the Army of the Republika Srpska (VRS), which was much later cost its commander, Colonel-General Ratko Mladić. Had there not been a war in Yugoslavia, Mladić, born in 1943 in Božinovići near Kalinovik in Bosnia and Herzegovina, would probably have been one of the JNA generals who would have enjoyed his retirement by fishing and playing with his grandchildren, celebrating anniversaries with his "classics".

The child of a fallen fighter goes first to the Military Industrial High School in Zemun, then to the Military Academy, majoring in the Army, which he graduates in 1965 as 18th in his class, sixth in rank. Mladić's career continues in a pattern, like that of most JNA officers who had no connection and protection. First in Skopje, as second lieutenant, commander of the automatic platoon, then regular promotions followed, to the rank of major, to which he was promoted in 1974. From 1976 to 1978, he attended the JNA Command and Staff Academy, which he graduated first in rank. After graduation, he was sent to Kumanovo as a battalion commander. Next came the Command of the Skopje Garrison, where he received the rank of lieutenant colonel, then the position of commander of the infantry brigade in Štip, and in early 1991 he was reassigned to the position of assistant rear commander in the 52nd (Pristina) Corps.

It would have been a typical career of an officer who, before the end of his career, was smiling at the rank of general, if in the first days of June 1991 he was not transferred to the then "deceptive" garrison in Knin, where the command of the 9th Corps of the JNA, which was at the center of the Serb conflict, was located and Croats and acted as a buffer zone. Mladić was appointed as the head of the Department for Operational-Teaching Affairs, and when open conflicts started not long after that, he was appointed as the Chief of Staff.

NOTHING WITHOUT A CAMERA: Before that, the commander of the Corps (who was subordinate to the Naval Command) was Major General Spiro Niković, an exceptional officer and gentleman, and he was replaced by Major General Vladimir Vuković, a calm elder who knew how to think and was not explosive. Probably knowing what kind of chief of staff he needed, he proposed the temperamental and impulsive Mladic for that position, whose relationship with his subordinates, depending on the situation, ranged from parental to that of a coachman.

Mladić understood the power of the media, especially cameras, in time, and he used it abundantly in personal propaganda, especially at the end of August when the JNA and the Krajina militia conquered the village of Kijevo between Knin and Sinj, and then Drniš. Wherever he went, cameras followed him, whether it was a tour of conquered territories or a prisoner exchange. Commander Vuković avoided the cameras, just like his predecessor Niković. An anecdote will remain recorded when Vasko Radusinović, a journalist from "Pobjeda" from Podgorica, after Niković's conference where he presented the situation in the buffer zone was delayed because the team from Television Belgrade did not arrive, and his colleague was in a hurry for hot lamb (so he wouldn't get cold), scolded the general dictaphone and said: "General, I can't wait for these from the television anymore, and when you start, press this red (button)."

The media entourage on the field made Mladić a hero, especially the late Radovan Brankov, who, with a mini camera in his hand, followed him closely. So Mladić, when he goes towards Vrlica, acts in front of the cameras as he personally removes the detonators from the explosives placed on the gas cylinders (the engineers had previously equipped them), as he goes forward and gives orders, which created a myth about him as a superman among the journalists who came from Serbia to report from the Dalmatian battlefield.

Of course, it cannot be disputed that he arrived everywhere, either to raise the morale of the fighters or to curse and threaten them for various things, for robbery or desertion. He also liked to "rub" the officers in front of the fighters.

BANGING THE FIST ON THE TABLE: Mladić's great luck was when he had with him capable officers at the head of brigades or some tactical groups - lieutenant colonels Borislav Đukić, Slavko Lisica, Tripko Čečović, Mile Acimov, Zdravko Tolimir, Ivan Vlačić, Mladen Skenderija and other officers of lower ranks, plus officers sent from Belgrade to various bodies of the 9th Corps. There were, of course, various hochstaplers and ignoramuses, who gained their wartime experience working in the JNA House restaurant in Knin, from where Lisica expelled them one evening and ordered to turn off the television on which they were watching the famous "Dnevnik addendum".

Negotiations with the Croatian side took place in the village of Žitnić between Drniš and Šibenik. While they were led by General Vuković (who later died in a helicopter crash on Brezovica), they took place in a calm tone. A stocky officer of short stature, Vuković didn't argue much or threaten ultimatums, but he didn't give in either. Thanks to him, the garrisons in Šibenik, Split, Zadar and Sinj were unblocked. For example, he gave a deadline for electricity and water to be turned on to the barracks, after which retaliation would follow - the bombing of military targets. The Croatian negotiators took him at his word and fulfilled what was requested, thus the garrisons were unblocked and evacuated.

With Mladić, things were different. During the negotiations, he yelled, threatened, theatrically hit the table with his fist, so that glasses and bottles with sour water fell, and those standing outside could hear, but nothing came of his ultimatums. A typical example is the break of the truce and the incursion of Croatian forces into the village of Nos Kalik at the mouth of the Čikola in Krk - he never realized the threat of recapturing that territory by force. Or the example of the first exchange of prisoners, in the separation zone towards Sinj, when the artillery major and twenty soldiers who were ambushed when the Croatian forces cut off the JNA column in Pakovo Selo near Šibenik were exchanged. The young man reproached the major, who had been tortured and beaten, and who showed signs of abuse, that he was guilty of falling into the hands of the enemy.

With the reassignment of Vuković to Banja Luka to the position of commander of the 5th Corps of the JNA in December 1991, Mladić became the commander of the Knin Corps and received the rank of major general.

COMMUNIST AND JNA OFFICER: His attitude towards his subordinates then becomes different. He performs from a height, and he suddenly became cold towards the media, forbidding even television crews to go to the field without special permission and a guide. The reason for this was justified - Brankov made some stupid, transparent and staged story about a "brave lieutenant colonel" who in Lika passes through minefields and leads fighters through "trodden snow, where no Serbian foot has ever set foot". And the camera records the trampled back.

While Mladić was chief of staff, the TV Belgrade team wanted to film the "action" of how two soldiers were killed and four wounded, so they asked the tankmen to fire several grenades at the enemy at the dividing line behind Lake Peruča, ostensibly in response to a Croatian attack. sides. And that happens, but the other side's response arrives - a guided anti-tank missile "maljutka" that hits an armored personnel carrier, blows up the commander who was standing in the turret, kills another, and injures four soldiers.

Mladić had his cameraman, a first-class ensign, by the way, a Croat, whom he trusted without reservation. And unlike those who filmed him in the VRS and thanks to whom the video from Srebrenica was "leaked" to the public (and they know how to do it), that man took with him to the grave the secret of where those videos are, which have never been shared with anyone. not sold nor published. The man was later in the Krajina army, and then in the Yugoslav Army, living as a tenant in Belgrade, because he had the decision to grant him an apartment canceled due to "wrong blood cells". He sold at the flea market on weekends, but was not tempted to sell the recorded material.

Mladić was criticized by many for forcing the soldiers to take off their cockades and return their pentagrams. He was a fanatical JNA and communist officer, but he didn't go that far. There is a story that he ordered the arrest of a man who was selling tapes of Chetnik songs in the center of Knin. It is true that Mladić sent military security guards to arrest and mobilize him. And the reason is simple: that man (today a businessman in Belgrade) in the morning in the parking lot in Knin across from the Corps Command on the main street, parked his car, put the amplifier and speakers on the hood and played those songs from morning to afternoon. And all this ten meters from the window of Mladić's office. He also got angry and ordered to be mobilized because of the noise.

THE DIVISION OF BIH ACCORDING TO THE AMERICAN PLAN: In the spring of 1992, Mladić went to Bosnia and Herzegovina, took command of the VRS, taking with him Colonel Zdravko Tolimir and Captain First Class Dragomir Pećanac (Mladić's head of security, the only person imprisoned twice at the Hague Tribunal for refusing to testify). Both were security guards. Some other officers are withdrawn only later. A Pećan from Knin goes to Sarajevo to unblock the "Marshal Tito" Barracks and successfully does so, then also the one in Lukavica. He takes with him Lisica, the officer who in early April carried out an extremely efficient and militarily perfect attack on the Croatian forces in Kupres.

Everything has mostly been said about Mladić's war journey in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but the current "defenders of Serbia" who make him stars as a hero, forget only two seemingly small things: how the Kupreška vrata, a strategically more than important pass, fell, and the Croatian forces climbed the Dinar, which opened the way for them to conquer Knin and Krajina; how then the VRS did not react in the Croatian operation "Bljesak" which conquered Western Slavonia, so that everything culminated in the fall of Glamoč, Bosanski Grahov, Drvar and other places up to Manjaca, until the Americans stopped the offensive.

His role in stopping the counter-offensive of the VRS on Bihać in November 1995 is particularly interesting, when members of the 5th Corps of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina in an apparently sudden offensive conquered the Serbian lines on the Bihać battlefield and "nonchalantly" came 30 kilometers to the village of Krnjeuša, near Bosanski Petrovac. The advance was prevented when a special unit of the Banja Luka police, led by the current Minister of Internal Affairs of the RS, Dragan Lukač, was involved, with the support of special forces from the Knin militia and the Military Police from Knin and Banja Luka. Then the counter-offensive of the VRS started, it reached the hospital in Bihać, and everything was stopped.

The second Krajina VRS corps, by the way, was only on paper, it practically had two and a half brigades. Mladić did not send reinforcements, obviously knowing that some things were agreed on at the political level and that it was necessary, on the orders of Slobodan Milosevic, to "clean up" the area along the left bank of the Drina.

That's how it happened. In the spring and summer of 1995, Croats practically walked along Glamočko and Livanjsko polje, Krajina and the western part of the RS, a noose was put around their necks. Mladić demonstratively, when he was at the command post on Oštrelje above Drvar during the "Storm", sent a special unit from the eastern part of the RS to stop the Croatian attack. They did so, and then he withdrew them. That was the end of the American plan for the territorial division of Bosnia and Herzegovina - 49:51 percent.

"If we exclude the great help of the VRS air force, helicopters with 'miniatures' in February 1993, when there was opposition to the Croatian offensive on Ravne Kotare and Maslenica, and the arrival of Veljko Milanković's 'Wolves from Vučjak' unit, find me when the VRS helped us . And we broke through the corridor together with them in 1992. And that was not led by Mladić, but by Momir Talić. And when we broke through it, we should have cleared the right bank of the Sava, conquered Orasje. Then it was said by the General Staff of the VRS that the East Bosnian Corps would do it. And of course it wasn't done, and we could have finished that operation in an instant. As for Cazinska Krajina, the VRS did not help us, but they pushed us away whenever they could. Because of the smuggling channels, of course. It is impossible that Mladić did not know about it," a former high-ranking officer of the SVK sublimates the whole situation. In a conversation with him and several former VRS officers, their conclusion crystallized: when he saw that his subordinates were being taken to The Hague, he should have turned himself in to defend them.