NEW YORK – Plenković slams Serbia at the UN over honoring of war criminal Mladić

NEW YORK, September 23 – Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković criticized Serbia at the United Nations General Assembly over the official honors bestowed on the late war criminal Ratko Mladić, calling the act an insult to justice.

“The military and official honors given to Mladić in Serbia were an insult to his victims and to the judgments of international courts,” Plenković told world leaders during the 81st UN General Debate in New York.

Plenković argued that genuine reconciliation across Europe requires direct confrontation with historical crimes, insisting that states must respect victims and reject the institutional glorification of perpetrators. State participation in events glorifying Mladić remains “entirely incompatible with the values of a union that Serbia seeks to join,” he added.

He recalled that while Mladić’s atrocities culminated in the 1995 Srebrenica genocide, his actions began earlier with the bombing of Croatian cities, the killing of civilians and the destruction of cultural and industrial infrastructure.

Mladić, widely known as the “Butcher of Bosnia,” was sentenced to life imprisonment by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in 2017 for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the 1992–1995 conflict, before dying in detention in The Hague in August of this year.

Turning to the Middle East, Plenković stressed that the international community must apply the same legal standards to protect civilians and ensure unhindered humanitarian access in Gaza.

He reaffirmed Croatia’s support for a negotiated two-state solution to enable Israelis and Palestinians to live in peace and security.