31 years on, the Gligorov assassination attempt still haunts North Macedonia

A remotely detonated explosive hidden in a parked Citroën Ami 8 was activated as Kiro Gligorov passed the Bristol Hotel on Macedonia Street. / IntelliNewsFacebook

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By Valentina Dimitrievska in Skopje October 4, 2026

Thirty-one years after a car bomb nearly killed Kiro Gligorov, the first president of independent Macedonia, the attack has returned to the centre of the country’s political confrontation — not because the long-running investigation has produced a breakthrough, but because the two main political parties are once again using the unresolved case to accuse each other.

The bombing took place just one day after Gligorov met then-Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic in Belgrade, with details of the meeting never made public.

The anniversary on October 3 has become an opportunity for the opposition Social Democratic Union (SDSM) and the ruling right-wing VMRO-DPMNE to revisit one of the darkest episodes of the country’s early independence, with SDSM directly linking the assassination attempt to what it describes as the political tradition of VMRO-DPMNE, while VMRO-DPMNE has rejected the accusation as baseless and demanded evidence.

The political exchange is striking precisely because the central fact of the case has remained unchanged for three decades: the perpetrator and those who ordered the attack have never been identified, and the investigation remains open.

A bomb in the heart of Skopje

On October 3, 1995, at around 9:50 a.m., Gligorov was travelling from his residence to parliament in central Skopje. As his official car passed the historic Bristol Hotel on Macedonia Street, a remotely detonated explosive hidden in a parked Citroën Ami 8 was activated.

Built in 1923, the Bristol is one of Skopje’s oldest surviving hotel buildings and an iconic landmark in the city. The historic hotel, which had stood idle and neglected for years, was sold to a new owner in July 2026 — more than three decades after it became the site of the assassination attempt on Macedonia’s first president.

According to the investigation, about 20 kilograms of explosives were used. The blast seriously injured Gligorov, particularly in the head and eye area, and killed his driver, Aleksandar Spirovski.

Gligorov's bodyguard, Ilco Teovski, was injured, while a passer-by was later killed and several other people were injured.

The scale of the investigation that followed reflected the seriousness of the attack. Police searched more than 30,000 vehicles and over 15,000 buildings, while around 19,000 people were searched. People considered potential suspects were questioned, but no one was ultimately charged in connection with the assassination attempt.

The investigation established that the attack had been carefully prepared and organised. It did not, however, establish publicly who had planned it or who carried it out.

An important distinction three decades later

The attack took place when North Macedonia was still a young and vulnerable state.

Independence had been declared only four years earlier, and the country was trying to establish itself internationally while navigating an extremely complicated regional environment following the breakup of Yugoslavia.

Just weeks before the bombing, on September 13, 1995, Macedonia and Greece had signed the Interim Accord in New York, an important step in reducing tensions between the two countries and opening a new phase in their relationship.

The assassination attempt on Gligorov came at a time when the country was moving decisively away from what author Zoran Dorevski describes as the “orbit of Belgrade” and charting a course towards Euro-Atlantic integration, Dorevski said at the promotion of his book The Skopje Assassination, infoplus.mk reported.

Gligorov had become the central figure in this difficult diplomatic period. His presidency was associated with the country's effort to avoid being dragged into the wars accompanying the breakup of Yugoslavia and to establish an independent foreign-policy course.

That makes the unanswered question surrounding the bombing particularly powerful: was Gligorov targeted because of a specific political decision, because of his international policy, or for another reason entirely?

Over the years, numerous theories have circulated. Some have pointed towards political actors inside the country, others towards regional or international interests. But speculation has never become a judicially established explanation.

One theory surrounding the assassination attempt points to the powerful Bulgarian business group Multigroup, headed by businessman Ilija Pavlov, who was himself assassinated in 2003. During the 1990s, Multigroup had significant business interests in Macedonia, particularly in trade and alleged smuggling activities linked to the embargo on the then Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY).

According to this theory, Gligorov and some members of the Macedonian government sought to curb Multigroup’s growing economic and political influence in the country, creating a potentially serious conflict of interests.

An unresolved case becomes political ammunition

The SDSM used this year's anniversary to turn the unresolved investigation into a broader political attack on VMRO-DPMNE and Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski.

In a statement, the SDSM said the assassination attempt was aimed at stopping the young state and its democracy, linking the attack to the political tradition of Vanco Mihajlov, the controversial leader of the old VMRO, and, by extension, to today’s VMRO-DPMNE.

The party also referred to former prime minister and long-time VMRO-DPMNE leader Nikola Gruevski, whose professional career included working at a bank controlled by Pavlov’s Multigroup in 1995. The SDSM further invoked the April 27, 2017 attack on parliament, arguing that the same political logic had resurfaced.

The connection between Multigroup and VMRO-DPMNE has never been officially or legally established, but one documented link concerns Gruevski. In 1995, when Gligorov was assassinated, Gruevski was a department director at Balkanbank, which was then owned and controlled by Pavlov’s Multigroup.

Those are political allegations, not findings of the Gligorov investigation. No court has established that VMRO-DPMNE or its current leadership was responsible for the 1995 attack.

VMRO-DPMNE responded in a statement rejecting the accusation outright and asking the SDSM to provide evidence for its claims. The party also turned the question back on the SDSM, pointing to the fact that the investigation had not produced a resolution despite periods when the Social Democrats held government.

The party specifically highlighted Ljubomir Frčkoski, who was interior minister when Gligorov was attacked, and questioned why the case had remained unresolved under successive governments.

The mystery that never went away

Gligorov eventually recovered sufficiently to return to office on January 10, 1996, and completed his second presidential term in 1999. He died in 2012, aged 94.

The investigation, however, never reached the same conclusion.

An extensive operation, reportedly involving cooperation with foreign security services, produced neither a definitive perpetrator nor a publicly established mastermind.

That leaves North Macedonia with an unusual historical paradox. The country has changed dramatically since 1995. It joined Nato, changed its constitutional name to North Macedonia, pursued EU membership and experienced several major political crises and transfers of power.

Yet one of the most consequential attacks in the country's early history remains unresolved.

And every October 3, the unanswered question returns. This year it has returned with particular force, because the political parties are not simply remembering Gligorov. They are arguing over what his assassination means — and, more importantly, what it says about the political system that emerged after independence.

‘Gobsmackingly bananas’ El Niño shatters global records

NASA / VIIRS data courtesy of NOAA.

Frida Garza,

 Grist

and
Kate Yoder

September 27, 2026 | 08:24AM ET

By now, you’ve seen the headlines, and there’s more of them every day: It’s “jaw-dropping.” It’s poised to make global warming worse. California has just declared a statewide state of emergency. This year’s El Niño — a shift in Pacific Ocean trade winds that scrambles global weather patterns — has been hotly discussed as one of the strongest on record, and one that could bring about potentially disastrous consequences. One study projects that it may cause as many as 451,000 heat-related deaths around the world by February.

This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist's weekly newsletter here.

The current El Niño has also been given an array of eye-catching descriptors. When Jeffrey Shaman, a climatologist at Columbia Climate School, heard the phrase “super El Niño” for the first time earlier this year, he said, “I literally googled it.” The phrase isn’t officially used by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or the World Meteorological Organization. But he still sees value in the label as a way of communicating the significance of this year’s likely unprecedented El Niño to the general public.


“It’s colloquial, and there’s nothing wrong with that at all,” Shaman said.

By all accounts, this year’s El Niño will also give the world a glimpse into a future of unabated warming due to the burning of fossil fuels — and an opportunity to change course before the worst effects occur.

Back up — what is El Niño?

El Niño is a naturally occurring weather phenomenon that begins when sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean rise above average. Although it doesn’t occur on a set timeframe, it tends to happen every two to seven years. Typically, trade winds blow east to west across the Pacific and push warm ocean water along the equator toward East Asia. But during an El Niño year, these winds slow down and sometimes reverse. The warm water that typically gets dragged westward sloshes back, now toward the western coast of the Americas.

This change in sea surface temperatures has ramifications far beyond the Pacific. It drives extreme weather across the globe, threatening crop harvests in several key agricultural regions, as well as worsening both drought and severe rainfall.


The impact of climate change on El Niño is complex. Research has shown that global warming has led to more frequent El Niños. But El Niño events are also associated with jumps in global mean surface temperature — or the average temperature of the Earth itself, a measure commonly used as a stand-in for climate change. It’s not easy to delineate how much additional warming is from El Niño and how much is from climate change, but what is clear is that the combination will be devastating. This year may turn out to be the hottest year on record, and 2027 may be even hotter. It could be a preview of the typical levels of warming the world might see by 2040, according to one high-end estimate.

Scientists don’t know exactly how that combination will play out. “It’s going to be a very, very strong event occurring against a backdrop of very rapid global warming,” said Christopher Callahan, a climate scientist at Indiana University. “I think we’re going to, unfortunately, learn a lot this year,” he said.
What makes this El Niño ‘super’?


There are many ways to measure the strength of an El Niño event. (NOAA keeps track of several of them here.) Some measure the sea surface temperature in different regions of the Pacific; there’s also indexes that take into account atmospheric changes as well as oceanic ones. The one used most often today is called the “Niño 3.4 anomaly.” In the U.S., in order for NOAA to declare an El Niño event, warming in this region of the Pacific must be 0.5 degrees Celsius above normal. If warming is 1 degree above normal, that gets labeled as “moderate”; if it’s 1.5 degrees above normal, then it counts as “strong”; and if it’s 2 degrees above normal, then it’s considered “very strong.”

The term “super” is broadly considered to be synonymous with “very strong.” However, a recent analysis of sea surface temperatures by Carbon Brief, released this week, shows that as of Monday, warming in the Niño 3.4 region reached 3.11 degrees.

That number is significant, because it means this year’s El Niño has already broken the record for the strongest El Niño, which peaked in November 2015.

El Niño events typically peak around December or January. (Fun fact: The phenomenon was named El Niño by South American fishers who noticed its timing and associated the warmer temperatures with the story of baby Jesus.) It’s possible that sea surface temperatures in the Pacific will drop over the next few months. However, that looks increasingly unlikely. Sea surface temperatures in June, July, and August were the warmest we’ve ever seen, and forecast models show that there is now a 90 percent chance that this El Niño will stay “very strong” through the end of the year.


“I was a little bit skeptical earlier this year of some of the more dire predictions,” said Callahan. But as more data kept coming in, he said, it became clear “that we’re going to see a generationally strong event this year.”
Where did the phrase ‘super El Niño’ come from?

While it might sound like a phrase an overzealous journalist invented, “super El Niño” was actually coined by scientists — a fact that surprised Jovana Vurdelja, an ecolinguistics researcher in Serbia. “I really thought it was just media sensationalism,” she said. The phrase first appeared in a 2003 paper looking at how a strong El Niño can be followed by a strong La Niña, its cooler counterpart, according to Vurdelja.

“Super El Niño” has taken off in English-speaking countries but also across Europe, where it’s been adopted by speakers of Serbian, Norwegian, Italian, German, French, Croatian, and other languages.


When extraordinary weather is on the way, people reach for amped-up language to communicate the scale of the hazard. But finding the right word to match that danger is like trying to find the right shoe size, Vurdelja said. The language can be too small, minimizing the threat, or it can be too big — exaggerations that can lead to nihilism or desensitization. “It’s extremely important that the word communicates the seriousness, the magnitude, the severity of the event itself,” Vurdelja said. She thinks “super El Niño” hits the mark, since it’s been embraced by scientists and the media alike.
What comes after ‘super El Niño’?

If super El Niños become a common occurrence — that is, if warming in the Pacific regularly reaches 3 or more degrees above normal — the language we use to describe these events may need to evolve. Some scientists have already suggested that the phrase du jour doesn’t go far enough: “This is going to be so far beyond a super El Niño, if the models are right, that we sort of need a new term for it,” the climate scientist Zeke Hausfather said in the podcast Shift Key last month.

We’ll “need stronger words, stronger language, and that’s when we get into this spiral,” Vurdelja said. That’s how you end up with scientists reaching for words like “mind-bogglingly crazy” and “gobsmackingly bananas” (a phrase Hausfather coined) to describe record heat. The term “Godzilla” El Niño, now taking off in news headlines, was coined by NASA climate scientist Bill Patzert in 2015.


The official categories for what counts as a strong El Niño used to make sense. “We hadn’t gotten above 2 degrees Celsius except occasionally,” Shaman said, and so the language experts initially settled on “seemed like a reasonable place to be.”

Whatever you call it, the most important thing will be planning for the potential impacts of this very strong El Niño — to understand what it means for food production, hydropower generation, public health, and extreme weather in the coming year. Given California’s recent state of emergency declaration, for now, maybe “super” will do just fine.

This article originally appeared in Grist.

BALKAN BLOG: Serbia’s students are testing a new way of doing politics

Anti-government student protest in Belgrade, June 28, 2025 / Gavrilo AndrićFacebookTwitterLinkedIn

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By Tatyana Kekic in Belgrade September 21, 2026

For nearly two years Serbia’s student protesters have occupied lecture halls, blocked roads and filled city squares. Now they are trying something rather harder: turning a movement without a conventional leader into a political organisation capable of running a country.

On September 14, the students submitted a list of 250 candidates for the snap parliamentary election on October 25. The list was subsequently certified by Serbia’s electoral commission with 69,099 valid signatures, nearly seven times the legal threshold of 10,000.

It is the clearest sign yet that the movement that emerged in the form of anti-corruption protests after the collapse of the Novi Sad railway-station canopy in November 2024 has the potential to move from the streets into electoral politics.

Its central promise is deliberately broad: change the way Serbia is governed.

The list, called Students’ List—Students Win, is headed not by a veteran opposition politician but by Ilija Srdanović, a cardiologist and professor at the University of Novi Sad who was little known outside academic and medical circles before the protests.

Srdanović has twice declined President Aleksandar Vučić's invitation to a televised debate, including an offer to meet on the independent broadcasters N1 or Nova S, saying he would speak to people who “have something to say and know something”.

Behind Srdanović are doctors, professors, engineers, artists, farmers and activists. Among the better-known candidates are Dejan Bodiroga, the former basketball star and current president of the EuroLeague, former National Bank of Serbia governor Dejan Šoškić, actor Tihomir Stanić and former athlete Mihail Dudaš.

The students say candidates were chosen through plenums and collective decision-making rather than by party leaders. They reject the idea of building the movement around a single figure, saying parliamentary mandates should be treated as public work rather than political prizes.

That puts the list at some distance from Serbia’s established party system, where political organisations have been closely identified with their leaders.

The ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) is running under the banner Aleksandar Vučić—United Serbia, putting the president at the top of its list as he prepares to leave the presidency and seek the prime minister’s job.

Vučić is followed by Miloš Vučević, the SNS president and former prime minister, and Ana Brnabić, parliament speaker and former prime minister. The ticket also includes doctors, professors, artists, athletes and students, among them violinist Jovan Kolundžija, actors Branislav Lečić and Lidija Vukićević, former basketball player Željko Rebrača and Miloš Pavlović, a student who organised pro-government rallies.

The wider governing camp contains a generation of ministers and senior officials with years of experience in government, including Siniša Mali, Zlatibor Lončar, Marko Đurić and Bratislav Gašić, although they are not among the 250 parliamentary candidates.

The student movement is bringing people into electoral politics who have worked outside the political establishment, while the governing camp can draw on a deep pool of politicians and officials accustomed to running ministries and state institutions.

That difference is central to the argument the students are making about how Serbia should be governed — and to the questions they will face if they win seats.

From protest to programme

The students have tried to demonstrate that they are offering more than an anti-Vučić campaign. Their 11-point programme is divided into three broad sections: “Serbia or the Mafia”, “Knowledge is Power” and “Serbia Grows With Us”.

Much of it concerns the institutions that protesters say contributed to the Novi Sad disaster. The students propose greater independence for prosecutors and judges, scrutiny of politicians’ wealth, investigations into corruption, greater transparency in public procurement and audits of major infrastructure projects. They also want to reform the media regulator and public broadcaster.

The economic programme includes support for start-ups, domestic businesses and farmers, closer links between universities and employers, competitive appointments to state-owned companies, cheaper medicines and affordable housing. Other proposals include free school textbooks and restrictions on the use of fixed-term employment contracts.

It is a programme focused more on repairing institutions than on radically remaking the economy. There is also relatively little detail on some of the questions that have long divided Serbian politics, including relations with the European Union, Russia and China, Kosovo, energy security and public finances.

That breadth and ambiguity reflect the coalition the students have assembled. The movement has brought together university professors, farmers, artists, liberals, nationalists and people who had previously stayed away from politics. Avoiding positions on issues that could divide that coalition may help preserve it; it could also become harder once parliamentary politics forces decisions on specific policies.

A crowded opposition

The students are not the only opposition force on the ballot. Several established opposition parties have backed the movement rather than fielding their own candidates. These include the Democratic Party, the Green-Left Front, the Movement of Free Citizens and other opposition groups.

But the opposition remains fragmented. A pro-European coalition comprising the Freedom and Justice Party, Serbia Centre and the Solidarity movement is running separately under the name European Serbia. A right-wing alliance of the New Democratic Party of Serbia and the Monarchists is also contesting the election under the banner Authentic Right.

The student movement has therefore entered an electoral field in which it is both an alternative to the established opposition and dependent on some of its support.

The government, by contrast, has a political organisation built over years. The SNS has a nationwide network, established campaign infrastructure and politicians with experience in government.

The students have demonstrated a different kind of organisational capacity: mass mobilisation, local networks and the ability to collect tens of thousands of signatures in a short period.

The experience question

Vučić has already made the students’ lack of ideology and governing experience a central line of attack. He has accused them of lacking political experience and a clear vision for Serbia, arguing that running the state is too serious to be entrusted to people without experience in government.

The composition of the student list offers a different definition of expertise.

A doctor, a university professor or an engineer may have spent years managing complex organisations and making decisions with significant consequences, but that experience is not the same as running a ministry or negotiating a state budget.

The movement has also deliberately avoided appointing a conventional political leader. That has helped it maintain a collective identity during the protests, but government would bring different demands: negotiating coalitions, choosing ministers, managing a bureaucracy and resolving disagreements among people who may share a desire for institutional change without sharing the same views on everything else.

Those questions have so far remained largely hypothetical. The movement's immediate objective has been simpler: turn the energy of the protests into votes.

 

Serbia opens factory to assemble Israeli-made drones

Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic visits the factory for assembling Israeli-made drones. / Aleksandar Vucic via Facebook

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By bne IntelliNews September 17, 2026

Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic on September 17 opened a factory for assembling Israeli-made drones, part of Belgrade's efforts to modernise its armed forces and expand domestic defence production.

The plant will employ about 100 people and supply drones to the Serbian military as well as the armed forces of other countries, Vucic said in a post on Instagram.

"Our plans are huge," Vucic said, adding that Serbia and its Israeli partners planned to open at least three more factories across the country.

Vucic said journalists were not invited to tour the facility because of the confidentiality of the production process. A video accompanying his announcement showed several drone models being assembled at the plant, but he gave no further details about its location, investment or production capacity.

Vucic confirmed in April that Serbia would jointly produce combat drones with Israel as part of a broader drive to strengthen its military capabilities and increase arms exports.

Israeli defence company Elbit Systems holds a 51% stake in the joint venture, with Serbia's state-owned arms producer Jugoimport SDPR holding 49%, according to documents obtained by BIRN and Haaretz and reported earlier this year.

The companies plan to produce two types of drones for short- and long-range missions, according to the reports.

In April, Vucic said Serbia could not produce drones at the same level as Israel on its own and would therefore develop them jointly with Israeli partners.

Serbia has stepped up military spending and procurement in recent years, buying equipment from France, Israel, China and other suppliers as it seeks to replace ageing Soviet-era systems.

Belgrade purchased artillery systems and drones from Elbit worth about $335mn in early 2025 and signed a separate deal with the company in August 2025 worth about $1.6bn for long-range missiles, drones and electronic warfare systems.

Serbia has also ordered 12 Rafale fighter jets from France's Dassault Aviation for about €2.7bn, while acquiring aircraft and helicopters from Airbus and missile and drone systems from China.

The country formally maintains a policy of military neutrality and is seeking European Union membership, while retaining longstanding ties with Russia and developing closer strategic and economic links with China.

 

Operations resume at Luxembourg airport after 'unauthorised' drones halt flights

Copyright Copyright 2011 AP. All rights reserved.

By Nathan Rennolds

Published on 19/09/2026 - EURONEWS

The airport has warned of knock-on delays and disruption as airlines work to restore regular flight schedules.

Flights were temporarily suspended at Luxembourg airport overnight due to "unauthorised" drone activity.

"Flight operations at Luxembourg Airport (ELLX) have resumed following the temporary suspension on the evening of Friday, 18 September 2026, due to the detection of unauthorised unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) in the vicinity of and subsequently over the aerodrome," a statement on the airport's website said.

The airport - the main hub for Luxembourg's national airline Luxair and cargo airline Cargolux - did not provide any details on where the drones may have come from or who was operating them, but it said it was continuing to monitor the situation alongside relevant authorities, airlines, and air traffic services.

It also warned of knock-on delays and disruption as airlines work to restore regular flight schedules.

"The temporary suspension of flight operations was implemented as a precautionary measure to ensure the safety of passengers, airline crews, airport personnel and aircraft," the airport added in its statement.

 

Bosnia's Jablanica to use AI drones to detect illegal waste dumps

Modern waste containers installed in Bosnia's Jablanica. / Općina JablanicaFacebookTwitterLinkedIn

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By IntelliNews September 16, 2026

Bosnia & Herzegovina’s Jablanica municipality will deploy drones equipped with artificial intelligence cameras to detect illegal waste dumps as part of a €1.13mn cross-border project aimed at improving waste management around tourist lakes.

The Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) reports that around 25% of all waste disposed of in Bosnia ends up in illegal dump sites, of which there are more than 1,400 illegal waste disposal sites, according to the UNDP.

The CIRCULARlakes project, funded mainly by the European Union through the INTERREG VI-A IPA Croatia-Bosnia and Herzegovina-Montenegro programme, will also introduce smart bins, composters and biowaste shredders, the municipality said.

Jablanica has secured BAM793,150 (€405,531), including BAM674,711 in EU funding, for activities in the municipality. The project runs until July 2028.

The initiative covers Jablanica Lake, Croatia’s Baćina Lakes and Montenegro’s Lake Skadar and aims to develop what organisers describe as an AI-supported circular economy model for areas exposed to intensive tourism.

It will include digital tools to optimise routes for municipal waste collection vehicles, while an application and gamification platform will be developed for residents and tourists.

The project also aims to increase local processing of organic waste, with a target of at least 50% being composted locally once the proposed waste-management model is adopted by municipalities and utility companies.

“The main goal of the project is the development and implementation of a smart, locally based and artificial intelligence-supported circular economy model,” the municipality said.

Other partners include Croatia’s City of Ploče, Montenegro’s capital Cetinje, Zero Waste Montenegro and Mostar-based LINK Entrepreneurial Center, which is leading the project.

The EU is providing €963,425.70, or 85% of the project’s total cost, with the remainder covered by the participating organisations.

 

Serbia shows off Chinese robot dogs at military exercise

A "robot dog" at the Pobednik 2026 joint tactical live-fire exercise. / Serbia defence ministryFacebook

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By Tatyana Kekic in Belgrade September 14, 2026

Serbia showcased its new "robot dogs" at a major military exercise on September 13, alongside drones, missile systems and other new equipment, as it pushes to modernise its armed forces and expand the use of unmanned systems.

The robot dogs were displayed at the "Pobednik 2026" live-fire exercise at the Pešter training ground in southwestern Serbia, near Sjenica. The robots can carry weapons including machine guns and grenade launchers and are intended to enter potentially mined or inaccessible areas ahead of special forces.

President Aleksandar Vucic said the exercise demonstrated for the first time an attack involving robotic and unmanned systems without direct human participation.

"Today you could see for the first time an attack by robotic, unmanned and unmanned aerial vehicles, without a single human," Vucic said, public broadcaster RTS reported.

The display comes weeks after Chinese robotics company AGIBOT opened a factory in the Serbian city of Sabac with Chinese automotive supplier Minth. The plant will assemble humanoid robots and robotic dogs and test their movement and vision systems as part of a wider €200mn investment plan.

Vucic has said Serbia could initially produce more than 5,000 robots a year and was testing humanoid robots for military applications.

Serbia also displayed China's HQ-17 air-defence system at the exercise, as well as domestically developed unmanned ground vehicles, drones and new multiple rocket launchers.

Belgrade has increasingly turned to China for military equipment, including drones, air-defence systems and CM-400AKG supersonic missiles, while also buying major weapons systems from Western suppliers such as French Rafale fighter jets.

Vucic said Serbia was developing a "digital army" to allow combat vehicles to transmit target information directly to artillery units, reducing battlefield decision-making time.

"We want peace and stability. We want to protect our sky and our land ourselves," he said.

The exercise took place amid continuing tensions between Serbia and neighbouring Kosovo and wider security concerns in the Western Balkans.

Serbia plans to reintroduce compulsory military service from March next year, with the planned service lasting 75 days.

 

Why Ratko Mladic is still a hero to some Serbs

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By Tatyana Kekic in Belgrade September 8, 2026

The funeral of convicted Bosnian Serb wartime commander Ratko Mladic has shocked Brussels, with thousands turning out to honour a man found responsible for some of the worst atrocities of the Yugoslav wars.

Around 16,000 people attended the funeral procession in Belgrade on September 7, according to the Archive of Public Meetings.

Mladic, who died on August 27 aged 84 while serving a life sentence in The Hague, was convicted of genocide over the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, as well as other crimes committed during Bosnia's 1992-95 war.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on September 8 that images from the funeral were "shocking", especially the presence of senior Serbian officials.

In fact, most top politicians chose to stay away.

President Aleksandar Vucic did not attend, deciding to host an Uzbek delegation instead. But his son Danilo was there, alongside a few ministers, including Defence Minister Bratislav Gasic and Justice Minister Nenad Vujic.

A divided memory

As difficult as it may be for EU leaders to understand, having been shaped by the view that Serbia committed the worst atrocities in Europe since the Second World War, Mladic remains a hero to many.

The funeral followed days of public tributes to the former general. Murals of Mladic were painted across the capital, while a huge banner bearing his face was unfurled at the city's main football derby between Red Star Belgrade and Partizan Belgrade, accompanied by chants of his name.

How can one understand this? Perhaps it reflects a deeply rooted belief that Serbia and Serbs were treated as the principal perpetrators of the Yugoslav wars, while crimes committed by other sides received less attention.

In response to criticism from former Croatian prime minister Jadranka Kosor, who said the EU should suspend Serbia’s accession negotiations, Bojana Selakovic, coordinator of the National Convention on the European Union, engaged in familiar whataboutery of Serbian politicians by highlighting Croatia’s own troubled relationship with its wartime past.

“Croatia should have received punitive measures from the European Union long ago,” she wrote on X.  

Many Serbs see the wars through the experience of a defeated population whose version of events was largely written by the victors and by international institutions in which they had little influence. They regard the ICTY as biased against them, arguing that it failed to adequately address crimes committed by Croat, Bosniak and Kosovo Albanian forces.

That perception has helped sustain the view of Mladic as a defender of Serbs rather than a perpetrator of crimes.

But how does one get around the fact that Mladic was responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocents at Srebrenica?

Thousands of civilians were killed, expelled or subjected to abuses by forces on all sides of the Yugoslav wars. Srebrenica stands apart in its scale: more than 8,000 unarmed Bosniak men and boys were killed there in July 1995.

The massacre took place under Mladic's command, and his responsibility for it was upheld by the ICTY.

The tension between the international legal record and a Serbian sense of victimhood over how it has been treated by the media and international institutions remains central to the way the country's wartime past is remembered.

Nevertheless, there are those in Serbia who have condemned the treatment of Mladic.

Green-Left Front lawmaker Dobrica Veselinovic called the tributes a source of national shame, while Movement of Free Citizens MP Vladimir Pajic criticised the decision to give Mladic state and church honours.

State distances itself

Amid the EU backlash to the funeral, Serbian officials have half-heartedly sought to portray it as a family matter.

Justice Minister Vujic said the former general had been buried with military honours at the request of his family, while the state had merely ensured public safety.

Yet the ceremony had several official and institutional elements.

Mladic's remains were returned to Serbia from The Hague aboard a Serbian government plane. His coffin, draped in the Serbian flag, was carried from the aircraft by Serbian soldiers and received by family members and government officials.

Mladic was buried at Belgrade's Topcider cemetery in a coffin covered with the flags of Serbia and Republika Srpska, and his funeral service was conducted by Serbian Orthodox Patriarch Porfirije.

Porfirije said many Serbs viewed Mladic as a soldier who had defended their people during the Bosnian war, while also acknowledging the suffering and trauma caused by the conflict.

Final nail in the coffin?

The funeral comes as Serbia's accession process has stalled, with Serbia having opened no new negotiating cluster since 2021.

In July, eight EU member states — Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Finland, Lithuania, the Netherlands and Sweden — blocked Serbia from opening Cluster 3, which covers competitiveness and inclusive growth.

The European Commission has backed opening the cluster, while opponents cite concerns over the rule of law, Serbia's alignment with EU foreign policy and sanctions on Russia.

The stalemate has left Serbia, the largest economy in the Western Balkans, falling behind some other EU candidates, particularly Montenegro, which has advanced much further in its accession negotiations.

The Mladic funeral adds another source of friction to an accession process already held back by political disputes, including Serbia's refusal to fully align with EU sanctions on Russia.

For Serbia, the controversy touches on a bigger question that remains unresolved more than three decades after Yugoslavia began to break apart: whether acknowledgement of crimes committed by Serb forces can coexist with recognition of crimes against Serbs and the sense of collective victimhood that continues to shape public memory.

That divide remains a major obstacle to reconciliation in the region — and an inconvenience for Serbia’s leadership as it tries to revive an EU accession process in which it is already losing ground to its smaller neighbours.