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The death of convicted Bosnian Serb military leader Ratko Mladić at age 84, while serving a life sentence for genocide at a United Nations prison in The Hague, Netherlands, has drawn thousands of mourners to the Serbian capital of Belgrade for a public funeral, while triggering sharp international backlash over efforts to honor a man widely branded the “Butcher of Bosnia”.

Mladić commanded Bosnian Serb military forces during the 1992–1995 Bosnian War, waging a campaign of ethnic cleansing to forcibly expel non-Serb populations from territory claimed by Bosnian Serb separatists. His forces oversaw the 44-month siege of Sarajevo that killed more than 10,000 civilians, and he was ultimately found guilty of genocide for orchestrating the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, where roughly 8,000 Bosniak Muslim men and boys were executed in the worst European atrocity committed since World War II. After 16 years as a fugitive, Mladić was arrested in 2011, and following a nine-year international trial, he received a sentence of life imprisonment in 2021.

Despite his confirmed conviction for mass atrocities, Mladić retains a deeply revered status among many Serbian nationalists, who view him as a heroic defender of Serbian interests. This divide was on full display in the days leading up to and during his funeral. Plans to grant Mladić an official state funeral were initially announced by a Serbian government minister, but the proposal was scrapped after widespread pushback from European leaders. Even so, the event retained significant state-aligned support: Mladić’s remains were transported back to Serbia from The Hague on a government aircraft, carried by six active-duty soldiers, and free bus transport was organized to bring mourners from across Serbia and the Bosnian Serb entity of Republika Srpska to the capital.

Long queues formed outside Belgrade’s St Luka church hours before the public lying in state began, with thousands of people waiting to pay their respects. Attendees included multiple sitting Serbian government ministers — including Defence Minister Bratislav Gašić and Justice Minister Nenad Vujić — and the funeral service itself was led by Patriarch Porfirije, head of the Serbian Orthodox Church. In his remarks, the patriarch stated that Mladić’s name would remain “deeply etched in the memory and prayers of the majority of our Serbian Orthodox people, who feel and nurture a deep sense of gratitude towards him.” Many in attendance were war veterans, and some attendees wrapped themselves in Serbian flags emblazoned with Mladić’s portrait. Outside the church, mourners lit candles as a choir performed over loudspeakers under clear skies. Mladić’s coffin was guarded by veteran volunteers inside the church, as his immediate family received condolences from the public. The tribute extended even to Serbian football: the night before the burial, supporters of top-tier club Red Star Belgrade unfurled a large tifo display honoring Mladić ahead of their capital derby match against Partizan Belgrade.

The public honoring of Mladić has prompted fierce condemnation from international bodies and war survivors alike. The European Union, which Serbia has sought to join since 2012 (with accession talks currently stalled), issued a formal statement denouncing any glorification of the convicted war criminal. “Ratko Mladić was a convicted war criminal who committed war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity,” the statement read. “Any glorification of war criminals, genocide denial and revisionism contradict the most fundamental European values and have no place in the EU or in EU candidate countries.”

For survivors of Mladić’s campaign of violence, the funeral has reawakened decades-old trauma. Zdravka Gvozdjar, a Sarajevo resident whose nine-year-old son was killed by Mladić-led forces during the siege of the capital, called the public funeral “really horrible.” “Mladić deserved to be erased from memory for good, not to be promoted as a hero,” she told reporters. “He should only be remembered as a butcher.”

Analysts point to systemic failures in confronting the legacy of the Bosnian War as the root of Mladić’s continued popularity in Serbia. Daniella Peled, editor at the Institute of War and Peace Reporting, who covered Mladić’s international trial extensively, noted that while the UN tribunal produced a comprehensive, evidence-based record of Mladić’s crimes, Serbia’s domestic media and education systems have not acknowledged the full scale of his atrocities or centered the perspectives of survivors. Pro-government outlets in Serbia regularly frame Mladić as a loyal soldier who only followed orders, Peled explained, leaving many ordinary Serbs with a skewed understanding of his actions. “It’s extremely challenging for post-conflict societies to undertake a national reckoning or acknowledge responsibility for the crimes of the past,” she added.

On a crisp Monday in central Belgrade, thousands of Serbian mourners filed through the small Serbian Orthodox Church of St. Luke to pay their final respects to Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb military commander who died last month while serving a life sentence for genocide and war crimes. The public lying-in-state comes as the Balkan nation openly rejects repeated warnings from the European Union, which has decried the official state-backed honors for a man convicted of orchestrating the worst act of genocide on European soil since World War II.

Mladic, 84, died on August 27 in a Dutch prison in The Hague, where he was incarcerated after an international tribunal found him guilty of overseeing mass atrocities during the 1992-1995 Bosnian War. His conviction centered on his role in planning the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, where more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were systematically executed after Mladic’s forces overran a U.N.-designated safe haven, as well as the four-year siege of Sarajevo and the operation of deadly concentration camps for non-Serb civilians. Though his funeral was formally organized by his family, the Serbian government has taken unprecedented steps to honor the convicted war criminal: it dispatched a state aircraft to repatriate Mladic’s remains to Belgrade last week, had soldiers carry his flag-draped coffin, and hosted an official military commemoration at a Serbian army facility over the weekend. Pro-government Serbian media outlets have confirmed Mladic will receive full military honors during his burial, with Serbian Orthodox Church Patriarch Porfirije set to lead the funeral service. Inside the Belgrade church on Monday, Mladic’s military cap and saber were displayed atop his coffin, flanked by uniformed men in combat fatigues.

For many Serbs, Mladic remains a revered nationalist hero, a symbol of efforts to unify ethnic Serb territories across the Balkans following the breakup of the former Yugoslavia. Milan Dobric, one of the mourners who traveled from Kosovo to attend the service, called Mladic “a man who gave everything in his life for the Serbian people.” “I am glad that this morning people are coming to pay special respect,” Dobric told reporters.

The decision to grant official state honors to Mladic has sparked immediate international backlash, deepening a rift between Serbia and the EU at a critical moment for the country’s decades-long membership bid. EU Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos announced she would scrap a scheduled visit to Serbia in protest, stating clearly that “the glorification surrounding his death is incompatible with the values on which the EU path is built.” Kos was joined by dozens of European officials, Balkan regional leaders, and survivors and relatives of Mladic’s victims in condemning the public homage. The Bosnian War, which ended with a U.S.-brokered peace deal in 1995, left more than 100,000 people dead and forced more than 1 million from their homes.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, a populist leader who has ramped up anti-Western rhetoric ahead of early high-stakes parliamentary elections scheduled for next month, has dismissed the EU’s criticism as baseless, accusing Kos of outright “lying.” Though Vucic, a former extreme nationalist who backed expansionist Serb policies during the 1990s war, is not attending the funeral, his government has stood firm in its defiance. For years, Serbia has refused to formally recognize the Srebrenica massacre as an act of genocide, only referring to it as a “horrific crime.” This is not the first time the country has granted state honors to a convicted war criminal: last year, former Serbian army chief of staff Nebojsa Pavkovic, who was convicted of war crimes by the U.N. tribunal, was buried with full military honors in Belgrade’s cemetery for distinguished citizens.

Mladic’s death and the subsequent public tributes have further complicated Serbia’s stalled EU membership bid. The process has already been frozen for years due to widespread democratic backsliding under Vucic’s administration and Serbia’s refusal to join international sanctions against Russia following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Nationalist supporters of Mladic have organized a series of public tributes across Belgrade in recent weeks, including street vigils, new murals depicting the former commander, and public displays of flares in his honor. The Serbian government has long argued that the West holds an inherent anti-Serb bias in its assessment of the country’s role in the 1990s Balkan wars, a narrative that has resonated with much of the Serbian public ahead of the upcoming election.

More than two years after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the capital city of Kyiv is facing the most intense period of air raid activity recorded since the war began, new data analysis confirms. A BBC Verify examination of official Ukrainian government figures reveals that daily air raid alerts in Kyiv have surged to levels not seen since the initial invasion in February 2022, upending daily life for millions of residents.

The most significant shift in Russian tactics has been the move from almost entirely nocturnal strikes to daytime attacks, a change that has spread chaos across schools, workplaces and public transit networks across the capital. Since Russia launched this new campaign of round-the-clock assaults in late August, Kyiv has recorded an average of 10 air raid sirens per day, with some days seeing as many as 13 separate alerts. Individual alerts can last anywhere from a handful of minutes to nearly four and a half hours, forcing residents to repeatedly stop what they are doing and rush to designated shelters. Data for the seven-day period starting August 27 shows the city endured 76 total alerts, already surpassing the previous high of roughly 66 alerts recorded in the first week of full-scale invasion in 2022 — a milestone made more notable by the incomplete data collected in the chaotic early days of the war.

Compounding the threat of more frequent strikes is Russia’s deployment of a new generation of jet-powered attack drones that are far faster and harder to intercept than older propeller-driven models. These new drones can reach speeds of nearly 370 miles per hour, three times the speed of the widely used Shahed propeller drones, putting additional strain on Ukraine’s existing air defense systems. Ukrainian military data shows Russia launched roughly 2,800 of these fast drones across Ukraine in August, nearly double the number deployed in July.

At the BBC’s on-the-ground office in Kyiv, the constant rumble of air defense engagements and exploding drones is a near-continuous backdrop to daily work. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has convened an emergency meeting with senior government ministers and military commanders to fast-track development of domestically produced high-speed interceptor missiles capable of countering the faster Russian drones. In remarks to officials, Zelensky acknowledged the sharp escalation of Russian terror tactics, noting that strikes against Ukrainian population centers have grown far more intense since the start of August.

Diplomatic and military observers warn of a growing risk: Russia may be able to ramp up production of these fast attack drones faster than Ukraine can develop and deploy a new generation of countering interceptors. Some defense analysts even warn the drone threat could soon outpace the risk posed by Russian ballistic missiles, which have already worn down Ukraine’s limited stock of Patriot air defense systems. Currently, Ukrainian forces rely on a combination of combat aircraft, anti-aircraft artillery, and shoulder-fired missiles to shoot down the jet-powered drones, but Ukrainian Air Force spokesman Yurii Ihnat confirmed that only around 60 percent of incoming drones are successfully intercepted.

Ihnat emphasized that new, purpose-built interceptors are critical to addressing the gap in Ukraine’s defenses. “The task now is to make them faster and equip them with specialised guidance systems so that they can shoot down jet-powered UAVs, the jet-powered Shaheds,” he said. “The key issue really is having guidance systems, because that is one of the crucial elements. It is not enough for the interceptor simply to fly fast — it has to hit the target. That is very important.”

For ordinary Kyiv residents, the constant air raids have become a debilitating new normal that wears on mental health and upends basic daily routines. The new daytime strike tactic has disrupted the start of the new academic year, with students repeatedly forced to evacuate classrooms and rush to underground shelters. At Drahomanov Ukrainian State University in central Kyiv, some students head to underground spaces immediately when sirens sound, while others have grown accustomed to the frequency of alerts and remain on public streets.

Diana, a student teacher, told the BBC that the constant disruptions have ruined her sleep and upended her daily schedule. “Sometimes it is hard because most of the day I need to go to safe places, like the metro or somewhere underground,” she said. “It’s a terrible time, but thank God we are alive. We go day by day.”

Ihor, a chemistry student training to be a teacher, said while he has acclimated to sirens after years of war, the constant alerts have gutted the quality of education in the city. “We are annoyed by the sirens because they are constant,” he said. “It destroys the quality of our education… We cannot study normally.”

After a recent drone strike on a residential neighborhood in central Kyiv, students from a nearby nearby school were immediately evacuated over fears of a secondary “double-tap” attack, a tactic that targets first responders and survivors following an initial strike. Seventeen-year-old Sophia described the constant uncertainty of daily life in the city, saying “It’s a little bit scary to live here in Kyiv. It’s very difficult.” Her interview was cut short when another air raid siren began, prompting her to urge the reporting team to move to shelter: “It is very dangerous for you to stand in the streets. Maybe we can have a second detonation.”

Local businesses have also been hit hard by the repeated alerts, as most are required to suspend operations and evacuate workplaces every time a siren sounds. During one alert, dozens of workers from Kyiv’s largest department store were seen gathering on nearby streets after evacuating, having grown accustomed to the frequency of disruptions. Public transit networks also face widespread chaos: overground trains crossing the Dnipro River that cuts through the center of Kyiv are forced to stop during alerts, stranding commuters who must scramble to find replacement bus service.

To address the widespread economic and social disruption, the Ukrainian government has announced a new two-tiered air raid warning system designed to minimize unnecessary disruption while still keeping residents safe. Under the new framework, a yellow warning will be issued for lower-risk drone attacks, allowing most work, travel and academic activity to continue with limited restrictions. A red warning will be reserved for higher-risk missile attacks, requiring full evacuation to shelters and a full suspension of public activity.

The escalation of Russian strikes came amid a brief pause in attacks over a recent weekend, when high-level U.S. diplomatic envoys visited Kyiv for talks focused on potential paths to ending the war. As Ukraine adapts to this new threat, analysts warn that Russia’s current campaign of constant strikes may also be a precursor to a planned winter offensive targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, a tactic Russia used in 2022 and 2023 to break civilian morale. There are growing fears that the drain on Ukraine’s air defense resources from the current drone campaign will leave the capital less prepared to defend critical energy infrastructure as temperatures drop in the coming months. Military analysts add that Russia’s goals extend beyond eroding civilian morale: the constant strikes are also intended to weaken Ukraine’s overall economy by disrupting commercial activity and damaging critical storage and industrial infrastructure.