Mladić was the commander of the Bosnian Serb Army during the 1992-95 Bosnian War and was found responsible for the Srebrenica genocide, in which more than 8,000 Bosniak Muslim men and boys were killed in July 1995.
The Serbian government said that it had no hand in organizing the funeral, however Mladić’s body was flown to Serbia on a government plane and his coffin was escorted by members of the Serbian Armed Forces.
“The elements of official support and the presence of some senior Serbian officials at the funeral are deeply regrettable,” von der Leyen said, adding that “they demonstrate a failure to confront a dark chapter in Europe’s recent history.”
“The images from Ratko Mladić’s funeral yesterday in Belgrade were shocking,” wrote European Council President António Costa. “Ratko Mladić was a convicted war criminal. He was responsible for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.”
The EU’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas struck an similarly hard line, calling the public glorification of Mladić “an affront to the memory of the victims” and warning that “true reconciliation cannot be built on revisionism, the denial of genocide or the honouring of perpetrators.”
Serbia, which is an EU candidate country, has not opened a new negotiating chapter with the bloc since December 2021. The process is blocked by eight member countries over its rule-of-law record and its refusal to sanction Russia for its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
This story has been updated with comments from Kaja Kallas. Milena Wälde contributed to this report.
