Ratko Mladić

Ratko Mladić (Serbian Cyrillic: Ратко Младић, pronounced [râtko mlǎːdit͡ɕ]; 12 March 1942 – 27 August 2026) was a Bosnian Serb military officer who led the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS) during the Yugoslav Wars. Widely referred to as the "Butcher of Bosnia", he was found guilty in 2017 of committing war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). He served a life sentence for these crimes in The Hague until his death in 2026.

A long-time member of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, Mladić began his career in the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) in 1965. He came to prominence during the Yugoslav Wars, initially as a high-ranking officer of the JNA and subsequently as the Chief of Staff of the Army of Republika Srpska in the Bosnian War of 1992–1995. In July 1996, the Trial Chamber of the ICTY, proceeding in the absence of Mladić under the ICTY's Rule 61, confirmed all counts of the original indictments, finding there were reasonable grounds to believe he had committed the alleged crimes, and issued an international arrest warrant. The Serbian and United States governments offered €5 million for information leading to Mladić's capture and arrest, but he remained at large for nearly sixteen years, initially sheltered by Serbian and Bosnian Serb security forces and later by family.

In 2011, Mladić was arrested in Lazarevo, Serbia, and extradited to The Hague. His capture was considered to be one of the pre-conditions for Serbia being awarded candidate status for European Union membership. His trial formally commenced in 2012 and lasted until 2017, when he was sentenced to life in prison by the ICTY after being found guilty of ten charges: one of genocide, five of crimes against humanity and four of violations of the laws or customs of war. He was cleared of one further count of genocide. As the top military officer with command responsibility, Mladić was deemed by the ICTY to be responsible for both the siege of Sarajevo and the Srebrenica massacre.

Early life and military career

Mladić was born in Božanovići near Kalinovik, at the time part of the Independent State of Croatia, on 12 March 1942.

His father, Neđa (1909–1945), was a member of the Yugoslav Partisans. His mother, Stana (née Lalović; 1919–2003), raised her three children; daughter Milica (born 1940), sons Ratko and Milivoje (1944–2001), by herself after the death of her husband in 1945 during World War II. Bosnia and Herzegovina was at the time part of the Independent State of Croatia, a fascist puppet state led by the Croatian Ustaše between 1941 and 1945, installed by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy after having invaded and partitioned the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1941. Mladić's father Neđa was killed in action (on Mladić's third birthday) while leading a Partisan attack on the home village of Ustaše leader Ante Pavelić in 1945.

Upon finishing elementary school, Mladić worked in Sarajevo as a whitesmith for the PRETIS company. He entered the Military Industry School in Zemun in 1961. He then went on to the KOV Military Academy and the Officers Academy thereafter. Upon graduating on 27 September 1965, Mladić began his career in the Yugoslav People's Army. In the same year he joined the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, remaining a member until the party disintegrated in 1990. Mladić was initially posted to Macedonia and rose through the ranks in the folllowing decades, commanding a platoon, an armoured batallion, and a brigade in succession.

On 31 January 1989, Mladić was promoted to be head of the Education Department of the Third Military District of Skopje. On 14 January 1991, he was promoted again, to Deputy Commander in Priština.

Role in the Yugoslav Wars

See also: Croatian War of Independence, Bosnian War, and Bosnian genocide

In June 1991, Mladić was promoted to Deputy Commander of the Priština Corps in the Socialist Autonomous Province of Kosovo at a time of high tension between Kosovo Serbs and Kosovo's majority Albanian population. That year, Mladić was given command of the 9th Corps, and led this formation against Croatian forces in Knin, the capital of the self-declared Republic of Serbian Krajina.

On 4 October 1991, Mladić was promoted to major general. The JNA forces under his command participated in the Croatian War, notably during Operation Coast-91 in an attempt to cut off Dalmatia from the rest of Croatia, which resulted in a stalemate (the Croats held the entire coastline near Zadar and Šibenik, and Serb Krajina expanded its territory in the hinterland). Among other early operations, Mladić aided Milan Martić's militia in the 1991 siege of Kijevo and the battle of Zadar.

On 24 April 1992, Mladić was promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel general. On 2 May 1992, one month after Bosnia and Hercegovina's declaration of independence, Mladić and his generals blockaded the city of Sarajevo, shutting off all traffic in and out of the city, as well as water and electricity. This began the four-year Siege of Sarajevo, the longest siege of a city in the history of modern warfare. The city was bombarded with shells and sniper shooting. On 9 May 1992, he assumed the post of Chief of Staff/Deputy Commander of the Second Military District Headquarters of the JNA in Sarajevo. The next day, Mladić assumed the command of the Second Military District Headquarters of the JNA. On 12 May 1992, in response to Bosnia's secession from Yugoslavia, the Bosnian Serb Parliament voted to create the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS, in short). At the same time, Mladić was appointed Commander of the Main Staff of the VRS, a position he held until December 1996. During the 16th session of the Bosnian-Serb Assembly on 12 May 1992, Radovan Karadžić announced his "six strategic objectives", including "Demarcation of the state as separate from the other two national communities", "A corridor between Semberija and Krajina" and "Establishment of a corridor in the Drina river valley, and the eradication of the Drina river as a border between the Serbian states." Mladić then said:

There we cannot cleanse nor can we have a sieve to sift so that only Serbs would stay, or that the Serbs would fall through and the rest leave. Well that is, that will not, I do not know how Mr Krajišnik and Mr Karadžić would explain this to the world. People, that would be genocide. We have to call upon any man who has bowed his forehead to the ground to embrace these areas and the territory of the state we plan to make.

In May 1992, after the withdrawal of JNA forces from Bosnia, the JNA Second Military District became the nucleus of the Main Staff of the VRS. On 24 June 1994, he was promoted to the rank of colonel general over approximately 80,000 troops stationed in the area.

In July 1995, troops commanded by Mladić, harried by NATO air strikes intended to force compliance with a UN ultimatum to remove heavy weapons from the Sarajevo area, overran and occupied the UN "safe areas" of Srebrenica and Žepa. At Srebrenica over 40,000 Bosniaks who had sought safety there were expelled. An estimated 8,300 were murdered, on Mladić's order. After Srebrenica fell, Mladić later stated on camera:

Here we are … in Serb Srebrenica. On the eve of yet another Serb holiday, we give this town to the Serb people as a gift. Finally, after the rebellion against the dahis, the time has come to take revenge on the Turks in this region.

On 4 August 1995, with a huge Croatian military force poised to attack the Serb-held region in central Croatia, Radovan Karadžić announced he was removing Mladić from his post and assuming personal command of the VRS himself. Karadžić blamed Mladić for the loss of two key Serb towns in western Bosnia that had recently fallen to the Croatian army, and he used the loss of the towns as an excuse to announce his surprising changes in the command structure. Mladić was demoted to an "adviser". He refused to go quietly, claiming the support of both the Bosnian Serb military as well as the people. Karadžić countered by denouncing Mladić as a "madman" and attempting to remove his political rank, but Mladić's obvious popular support forced Karadžić to rescind his order on 11 August. His actions during the war led to many dubbing him "The Butcher of Bosnia".

Several of Mladić's conversations were recorded during the war:

In an intercepted conversation on 23 May 1992, Mladić told Fikret Abdić that he was ‘here for peace’, but threatened reprisal attacks if his demands were not met and stated that he would ‘order the shelling of entire Bihać […] and it will burn too’. Mladić warned Abdić that ‘[t]he whole of Bosnia will burn if I start to ‘speak’’. Mladić then threatened that the Bosnian leadership, which included Abdić, caused ‘all of this’ and stated that if his demands to Abdić were not met, he would ‘not leave Sarajevo alone as long as anyone’s breathing in it’... Mladić said ‘So, we went slowly to capture these valleys and clean up that Turkish rubble’. Mladić added that he was afraid ‘the guys from down there’ would allow the refugees – whom he described as ‘Turks’ and Croats – to return, stating this was why they ‘should see what we need to do and how to do it’. In another recorded conversation between Mladić and Karadžić on the same day, Mladić stated that he had earlier said to Professor Koljević, ‘fuck the Turks in Žepa, in Srebrenica, in Goražde.

— ICTY, in its verdict against Mladić.

On 8 November 1996, Biljana Plavšić, the president of the Bosnian Serb Republic, dismissed Mladić from his post. He continued to receive a pension until November 2005.

Personal life and death

Mladić and his wife Bosiljka had two children; a son named Darko and a daughter named Ana. Ana died in 1994, aged 23, in an apparent suicide. She was not married and had no children.

There were conflicting reports in Serbian publications regarding Ana Mladić's death and the discovery of her body. Some said her body was found in her blood-splattered bedroom, others in a nearby park or in the woods near the Topčider cemetery. It was concluded that she had used her father's handgun, which he had been awarded at military school in his youth. There are also conflicting opinions on the reason for her suicide, with one of the more common theories being that she was under immense pressure from the general public as her father was frequently chided and scrutinized in the Serbian newspapers for his actions against civilians in Bosnia. Another theory points to the death of her boyfriend Dragan, who had been killed in the Bosnian War. Historian Jože Pirjevec supports this theory, writing that she killed herself to punish her father for sending her boyfriend to fight on the front line, and for failing to tell her about his death.

Mladić died on 27 August 2026 in the United Nations Detention Unit in The Hague, after suffering several strokes.