标签： Europe

The death of Ratko Mladić, the Bosnian Serb military commander infamously labeled the “Butcher of Bosnia” for his role in the 1990s Balkan Wars, has pulled the world’s attention back to one of the darkest chapters of European conflict since World War II. Mladić, who was convicted of genocide and multiple other war crimes by an international tribunal, died while serving his life sentence in a European prison.

Veteran BBC correspondent Allan Little, who covered the entire dissolution of the former Yugoslavia and encountered Mladić in the opening months of the Bosnian War, shared his searing, firsthand memories of the violence and human cost that unfolded alongside the commander’s campaign.

Little recalls that during the darkest nights of the conflict, orange flames from systematically burned settlements painted the landscape, the only visible light across the dark valleys of Bosnia. These fires were the visible signature of the ethnic cleansing campaign that Mladić’s forces waged across the region. Local men, carrying outdated weapons passed down through generations alongside centuries-old intergroup fears and distrust, patrolled their homes in shadow, bracing for violence that would upend their communities permanently.

He vividly recounts one morning when a procession of 40,000 displaced people emerged from a dense forest. Two days prior, they had been driven from their homes by a sudden unprovoked Serb military advance, fleeing with only the small possessions they could carry. Most walked the long, brutal path to safety; others were crammed into the backs of aging farm carts pulled by donkeys. Among the exhausted crowd was an 80-year-old man, who looked close to collapse after the journey. He told Little he had been separated from his wife during the trek, and had no idea if she had survived. When Little asked if he was Croat or Muslim — the simplistic ethnic labeling that came to define coverage of the war — the man answered simply, “I am a musician.” That reply has haunted Little for decades, a reminder that the conflict’s dehumanizing ethnic labels erased the full, complex humanity of thousands of ordinary people who were reduced to targets solely because of their background.

Little met Mladić himself in the first sweltering summer of the war, at the Lukavica barracks on Sarajevo’s southern edge. The compound was flooded with loose weapons and aggressive, menacing paramilitary fighters. A Kalashnikov rifle cost just $200 on the open market there; a single hand grenade sold for $1 — the same price as a single fresh egg in the besieged city of Sarajevo at the time. When Little shook Mladić’s hand, the commander held the grip tight, pulling Little close, still buzzing with adrenaline from a recent trip to the front lines in central Sarajevo. Mladić held Little’s gaze for minutes as he claimed to be the defender of brotherhood and unity across the former Yugoslavia, saying he dreamed of a world without weapons or war. Even then, Little writes, Mladić came across as unflinchingly fanatical — a dangerous fanatic whose ideology would unleash unspeakable suffering.

In the years that followed, forces under Mladić’s command carried out the worst war crimes seen on European soil since the Nazi regime. They gave the global lexicon of war the chilling term “ethnic cleansing,” perpetrating mass murder, systematic sexual violence, forced expulsion of entire communities, and the systematic burning of hundreds of villages. The ultimate goal of this campaign was to carve out an ethnically pure Serbian territory across parts of Bosnia and Croatia. The campaign culminated in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, where more than 8,000 Bosniak Muslim men and boys were systematically killed — a crime the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia ruled constituted genocide.

For Little, the war hit close to home just two days after he encountered the displaced 80-year-old musician on a muddy roadside. His colleague and friend, 25-year-old cameraman Tihomir Tunukovic, a talented young filmmaker from Zagreb who had worked alongside Little for 18 months, was killed by a Serb gunner positioned on a ridge overlooking the road Tunukovic was driving. Little and his team carried Tunukovic’s body back across rutted mountain trails to the coastal city of Split for burial, and the grief of that loss connected them directly to the cycle of vengeance that drove the war’s endless cycle of violence.

While Mladić never pulled the trigger that killed Tunukovic or the tens of thousands of other civilians who died during his campaign, Little writes, the culture of unaccountable violence that Mladić fostered under his command directly enabled the mass loss of life that defined the Bosnian conflict. His death closes a grim chapter in modern European history, but the scars of the atrocities he oversaw remain deeply etched across the Balkans and the collective memory of a continent.

A devastating fire that erupted earlier this week at the Amur Gas Chemical Complex, a high-profile Russian-Chinese joint petrochemical project in Russia’s Far East, has left 15 people dead, facility management confirmed in an official statement released Thursday.

Footage circulated widely across social media platforms captured chaotic scenes from Tuesday, when large groups of construction and plant workers scrambled to escape the spreading blaze to reach safe zones. All 15 victims killed in the incident were on-site employees, according to the complex’s official statement. Of the deceased, one holds Russian citizenship, while the remaining 14 are foreign nationals, though management has not released additional identifying information. The previous day, officials had confirmed the recovery of eight bodies: one Russian national and six Chinese citizens.

Situated in Russia’s Amur region just kilometers from the Chinese border, roughly 5,500 kilometers east of Moscow, the complex is a major joint venture between China’s state-owned energy giant Sinopec and Russian petrochemical leader Sibur. Still under construction, the facility is slated to become one of the world’s largest production hubs for polyethylene and polypropylene, with a planned annual output of 2.7 million tonnes of the two widely used plastics when it enters full operation in early 2027.

Russia’s national Investigative Committee has opened a formal investigation into the fire, focusing on identifying the root cause and examining potential violations of workplace safety protocols. As of Thursday, investigators have found no evidence that the fire was the result of sabotage or intentional foul play.

When contacted by reporters for additional comment, Sibur directed inquiries to the Amur Gas Chemical Complex’s official statement, which noted that emergency recovery operations have already been launched in close coordination with Russia’s Ministry of Emergency Situations. The statement added that construction and installation work at sections of the facility that escaped fire damage will proceed on their original schedules, and continuous air quality monitoring is underway across the site. Officials confirmed that so far, emissions of hazardous substances have remained below regulated maximum allowable limits. Preliminary investigations have also found the fire was confined to the complex’s auxiliary process area, leaving the facility’s core production equipment undamaged.

China’s state-run Global Times reported that the local Chinese consulate has deployed a special response team to the incident site to assist with response and identification efforts. The Associated Press’ request for additional comment from Sinopec had not received a response as of Thursday’s statement. This report includes contributing reporting from AP correspondent Fu Ting in Washington, D.C.

Ratko Mladić, the high-profile Bosnian Serb war criminal convicted of orchestrating genocide and mass atrocities during the 1992–1995 Bosnian War, has died at the age of 84 while serving a life sentence in a United Nations prison in The Hague. The death, first broken by Serbian media outlets, was later officially confirmed by a UN spokesperson, ending a decades-long chapter of international justice proceedings for a man whose actions left an indelible mark on 20th-century European history.

Mladić led Bosnian Serb military forces during the breakup of the former Yugoslavia, when competing ethnic and political factions clashed in a violent conflict that tore apart the Balkan region. Under his command, troops carried out widespread systematic ethnic cleansing campaigns against Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) and Bosnian Croat civilian populations. His forces also laid a years-long siege around Bosnia’s capital Sarajevo that killed more than 10,000 civilians and combatants trapped in the city, and perpetrated the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, where 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were systematically executed in the worst European atrocity since the end of World War II.

For nearly 16 years after the end of the Bosnian War, Mladić evaded international capture, moving between hiding locations across the Balkan region before he was finally apprehended in a rural area of Serbia in 2011. Following his arrest, he was transferred to The Hague to stand trial before the UN’s international war crimes tribunal. In 2017, the court handed down a full life sentence, finding him guilty on all counts of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. That conviction and sentence were upheld on appeal in 2021, cementing the legal finding against him for his role in the mass violence.

In the final months of his life, Mladić’s legal team launched an eleventh-hour bid to secure his early release, arguing that his health had declined to terminal levels and that he should be allowed to spend his final days outside of detention. In May 2025, the UN court rejected this request, acknowledging that Mladić’s health condition was “dire” but ruling that he was already receiving appropriate, comprehensive palliative care within the UN detention system. He remained in the facility’s on-site hospital for his end-of-life care up until his death, officials confirmed.

Ratko Mladić, the former Bosnian Serb army commander convicted of orchestrating the worst European atrocities since World War II, has died at age 84 while serving a life sentence for genocide and crimes against humanity. Infamously dubbed the “Butcher of Bosnia” for his brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing during the 1990s breakup of Yugoslavia, Mladić leaves behind a legacy of unresolved trauma and deep division across the Balkan region.

Born in March 1942 in a small mountain village near Sarajevo, Mladić grew up shaped by early loss: his father was killed fighting for Tito’s anti-Nazi partisans when Mladić was just two years old. After a brief stint as an apprentice tinsmith, he pursued a military career, graduating from officer training school in 1965. A driven and capable soldier, he rose quickly through the ranks of the Yugoslav People’s Army, earning command postings in Macedonia and Kosovo.

The 1980 death of Josip Broz Tito, the unifying leader of Yugoslavia’s fragile multi-ethnic confederation, unlocked decades of simmering nationalist tensions. When Croatia declared independence in 1991, Mladić was deployed with Yugoslav federal forces to reassert control, where he gained a reputation for reckless frontline courage that won him fierce devotion from his troops. As conflict spread to Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1992, Mladić defected to lead the army of the self-declared breakaway Republika Srpska, embracing a radical nationalist agenda to create an ethnically pure Greater Serbia.

Mladić viewed Bosnia’s Muslim Bosniak population as illegitimate “interlopers” descending from Ottoman-era occupation, and framed his campaign as a mission to correct historical injustice. His first major act of aggression was the 1,425-day siege of Sarajevo, the longest continuous city blockade in modern warfare. Holed up on the hills surrounding the multi-ethnic capital, Mladić’s forces pounded civilian neighborhoods with daily artillery barrages and sniper fire. On a single day in July 1993, nearly 4,000 shells rained down on the city. By the time the siege ended, more than 13,000 Sarajevo residents were dead, thousands of women were systematically raped, and the vast majority of the city’s buildings lay damaged or destroyed. Declassified command communications from Mladić’s headquarters revealed his deliberate strategy of terror: “Shoot at slow intervals until I order you to stop. Target Muslim neighborhoods… Shell them until they are on the edge of madness.”

Even as he waged war, Mladić kept his wife and two children in relative safety in Belgrade. His life was rocked by personal tragedy in the 1990s, when his 23-year-old daughter Ana, torn between her love for a human rights activist who demanded she renounce her father and her family loyalty, died by suicide with Mladić’s own service weapon. Mladić never accepted responsibility for her death, instead blaming the tragedy on foreign conspiracies.

In 1995, NATO finally intervened to end the siege, launching devastating airstrikes against Mladić’s positions around Sarajevo that broke the blockade. But the worst atrocity of the Bosnian war was still to come. That summer, more than 40,000 Bosniak civilians fled to Srebrenica, a small eastern Bosnian mountain town designated a UN-protected “safe area.” Mladić’s forces surrounded and bombarded the town, then seized control. In front of international television cameras, Mladić greeted residents with false assurances of safety, handing out sweets to children and promising no harm would come to them. Within days, his troops rounded up every Bosniak man and boy they could find, from 12-year-old children to elderly men in their 70s. In a coordinated, industrial-scale mass killing, 8,000 people were executed and dumped in unmarked mass graves. The Srebrenica massacre remains the worst act of genocide on European soil since 1945, and a widely cited failure of the international community to protect vulnerable civilians.

After the massacre, Mladić was immediately indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), with the U.S. offering a $5 million reward for information leading to his capture. For 16 years, he evaded arrest, protected first by Serbian dictator Slobodan Milošević, who allowed Mladić to live openly in Belgrade, hunt deer, attend public events, and even maintained a dedicated military unit for his personal protection. Mladić remained a celebrated folk hero among many Serbian nationalists, who viewed him as a defender of Serbian national interests.

The net began to close after Milošević was ousted from power and arrested in 2000, with Serbia’s bid for European Union membership tied to its cooperation with the ICTY. Mladić went on the run, moving between hidden safe houses for nearly a decade, protected by a shrinking circle of loyal bodyguards and eventually his own family. After his former political partner Radovan Karadžić was arrested in Belgrade in 2008, Mladić became the tribunal’s top priority fugitive. In May 2011, Serbian police tracked Mladić to a squalid remote farmhouse, where he was found suffering from multiple strokes and in poor health, 16 years after his indictment.

Mladić’s ICTY trial lasted four years, with the court sitting for more than 500 days, hearing testimony from nearly 600 witnesses, and reviewing more than 10,000 pieces of evidence. In 2017, he was convicted on all counts: genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes, and sentenced to life in prison. A defiant and unrepentant Mladić smiled and gave a thumbs-up to cameras upon entering the courtroom, but erupted in rage when the verdict was read, shouting that the ruling was “all lies” before being forcibly removed from the chamber. While survivors and victim relatives hailed the conviction as a long-delayed victory for justice, the ruling deepened divisions across the Balkans: Serbian nationalist leaders condemned the trial as an anti-Serbian plot, and many Serbs continue to view Mladić as a national hero.

In his final years, Mladić, who suffered from multiple heart attacks and strokes, repeatedly applied to be transferred to a Serbian prison to serve out his remaining sentence, a request supported by both Serbia and Russia, but repeatedly rejected by the court. As of January 2026, the regional divide over Mladić’s legacy remains raw: a Bosnian opposition politician was sentenced to three years in prison just months ago for publicly glorifying Mladić and Karadžić. While the 1990s Bosnian war has long ended, the tension and division sown by Mladić’s campaign of ethnic cleansing persist, with Bosniaks and much of the international community remembering him as one of the worst war criminals in modern European history, and segments of the Serbian public continuing to view him as a patriot and defender of their nation.

In a development that has reopened bitter wounds across the Balkans, convicted Bosnian Serb war criminal Ratko Mladic, the 84-year-old former military leader held responsible for some of the worst European atrocities of the 1990s, has reportedly died while in United Nations prison custody. Multiple regional state broadcasters, including Serbia’s public service network RTS and the official television service of Bosnia’s Serb entity, first broke the news of Mladic’s passing Wednesday, noting he died at a U.N.-administered prison hospital facility based in The Hague, Netherlands.

An anonymous family member, who requested withholding their identity due to the highly sensitive political and social nature of Mladic’s case, confirmed the initial reports to the Associated Press. The source also shared that Mladic’s son, Darko Mladic, was already traveling to the Netherlands to coordinate next steps. As of initial reporting, however, spokespeople for the international U.N. tribunal system have stated they cannot immediately verify the death, leaving room for formal confirmation in the coming hours.

Mladic’s name remains permanently tied to the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, the worst act of ethnic cleansing on the European continent since World War II, where more than 8,000 Bosniak Muslim men and boys were systematically executed under his military command. He was also found guilty of orchestrating the 44-month siege of Sarajevo that killed more than 10,000 civilians during the 1992-1995 Bosnian War. After evading capture for more than a decade following the end of the conflict, Mladic was arrested by Serbian authorities in 2011 and transferred to The Hague to stand trial. In 2017, he was convicted of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes by the U.N. International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals, which sentenced him to life imprisonment.