Convicted war criminal Ratko Mladic, known as the "Butcher of Bosnia," whose forces besieged the Bosnian capital for several years in the 1990s and carried out the worst massacre in Europe since World War II, died Thursday while serving a life sentence for his crimes, U.N. officials said. He was 84.

Mladic died at a hospital in The Hague, Netherlands, U.N. court officials said.

The U.N. tribunal for war crimes committed during the wars in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s sentenced Mladic to life in prison in 2017 in what was considered a key step toward bringing justice to the victims. He had been in custody since 2011 after many years on the run.

The ruthless, former communist officer-turned nationalist warlord was one of the most notorious figures of the Bosnian War that left more than 100,000 people dead and over 1 million homeless. He commanded his troops to "scorch the brains" of the Bosnian Muslims and boasted of being a "Serbian God."

When the ethnic war in Bosnia-Herzegovina started in 1992, Mladic became the commander of the Bosnian Serb troops and took control of large swaths of the country to form a Serb mini-state.

Serbs under Mladic's control laid siege to the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, and other cities and villages, established concentration camps for detained non-Serb civilians and enemy soldiers, and systematically killed prisoners.

In Sarajevo, Serb troops kept the city isolated while killing civilians with snipers and heavy artillery. In 1995, Mladic's troops slaughtered more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica – the first case of genocide in Europe since WWII.

But Mladic and his admirers have never repented. He was seen by many as a patriot fighting for the first pan-Serbian state. Defiant, Mladic acted bullishly during his trial and yelled at the judges when sentenced to life in prison.

Former Bosnian Serb military leader and war criminal Ratko Mladic enters the courtroom prior to the pronouncement of his appeal judgment at the U.N. International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT) in The Hague, Netherlands, June 8, 2021. (Reuters Photo)

Munira Subasic, from the Mothers of Srebrenica group, said she had mixed feelings about Mladic's death and deplored that his crimes are still being denied by many Bosnian Serbs.

"Today, a major war criminal died, the criminal of the Balkans," Subasic said. But while mothers of victims "are still carrying the pain in our souls" 31 years later, "we are still listening to denials, we are still listening to how Ratko Mladic was a hero for the Serbs," she said.

"I am sorry that he died and that he did not suffer for a little while longer, that he didn't wait for more and dream about the eyes of our children," she said.

Emir Suljagic, head of the Srebrenica Memorial, said "there is not much to say" about Mladic's death. "Nor does that fact change much."

"It doesn't bring back the dead. It doesn't clear mass graves. ⁠It does not change judgment. It does not turn the criminal into a historical figure," Suljagic said.

"Now the hardest part of the job remains: not to let the truth, responsibility and memory die with him. Mladic's death is another moment in which we must decide what we will remember and more importantly, what we will not allow to be erased."

To this day, many Serbs still see him as a hero. Local authorities in Bosnia's Serb entity, Republika Srpska, called on residents to pay their respects to Mladic in churches across the entity.

Residents of Pale, a Bosnian Serb stronghold just outside of Sarajevo, mourned Mladic.

A woman looks at a memorial with the names of 1,601 children killed during the 1992-1995 siege of Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Aug. 27, 2026. (Reuters Photo)

"He was murdered there, in those dungeons," said Janko Seslija, a former Bosnian Serb soldier. "I feel sorry for Gen. Mladic. He was an honorable man, honorable soldier and commander."

Former Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik lit a candle at a church in Banja Luka, calling Mladic "a great figure for the Serbian people" who "took command of the army at a difficult time."

The pro-Russian Dodik has pushed for the separation of Republika Srpska to join neighboring Serbia. His policies have stoked fears of renewed instability in the country.

Mladic was born March 12, 1942, in the tiny Bosnian village of Bozinovici, in the hills 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Sarajevo. Like other protagonists in the Yugoslav conflict, he imbibed nationalism from his family's fate in WWII – his own father was killed by Croats.

A communist-era officer, Mladic sided with the Serbs as Yugoslavia disintegrated into war. Mladic first led a Serb insurgency in Croatia before taking over the Bosnian Serb army that was backed by Serbia and then-President Slobodan Milosevic, who also died in the custody of the Hague court in 2006 while on trial for genocide.

Ratko Mladic (L), Bosnian Serb military commander whispers on Aug. 5, 1993 in Serb stronghold of Pale to the ear of Radovan Karadzic, Bosnian Serb warlord and leader of the Serb-run part of Bosnia during the 1992-1995 war. (AFP Photo)

Mladic was known for his obsession with his nation's history. He saw Bosnia's war as a chance for revenge against the onetime 500-year-long Ottoman control of Serbia. He often referred to Bosnia's Muslims as Turks and boasted of revenge when his troops overran the protected U.N. enclave of Srebrenica in 1995.

Carried away by Serb dominance in firepower and international ignorance, Mladic was convinced of his final victory.

"The time has come... for revenge against Turks in these regions," Mladic said after taking over Srebrenica.

What happened in Srebrenica remains a mark of shame for the international community, as the town had been declared a U.N. "safe haven" for civilians in 1993.

Instead, the Dutch U.N. peacekeepers watched as Serb troops took men and boys, forced them to strip, killed them and bulldozed their bodies into mass graves in a brutal rampage that lasted for over a week.

Many of the bodies were dug back up and reburied in order to try to hide the evidence. The few who escaped told harrowing stories of murder, torture and rape by the Bosnian Serb forces.

This photograph shows the memorial cemetery in the village of Potocari, near the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Aug. 27, 2026. (AFP Photo)

The Srebrenica survivors said one image forever will be imprinted in their minds: Mladic handing out candy to Muslim children who had been rounded up on the town's square and reassuring them that everything would be all right – even patting one child on the head.

Convinced of the power of his army, he used to tell his soldiers: "When I give you guarantees, it's as if they are given by God." To clear the way for his helicopter to land, he would tell air traffic controllers: "Here speaks Ratko Mladic - the Serbian God."

Sarajevans still remember his commands to the Serb gunmen pounding the Bosnian capital in early 1992. He issued his orders through a military radio system, not bothering to scramble the signal, which was picked up and taped by the Sarajevo police.

"Turn toward Velesici, there are no Serbs there," Mladic said as he ordered his artillery to pound the Sarajevo suburb.

"Scorch their brains," he told his gunmen.

Faced with the U.N. tribunal's genocide indictment, Mladic in 1996 began his fugitive years in Han Pijesak, a military compound in eastern Bosnia built for Yugoslavia's longtime communist leader, Josip Broz Tito, and designed to withstand a nuclear attack.

With his wife, Bosa, Mladic settled down to imposed domesticity, passing the time caring for bees and goats. His 23 goats reputedly bore the names of foreign dignitaries he despised, such as Madeleine Albright, the former U.S. secretary of state.

Surrounded by security guards, he occasionally ventured out of the dense pine forest to mark events such as the anniversary of the Bosnian Serb army and St. Vitus Day, a religious festival marking the 1389 Serb defeat by the Turks at Kosovo.

Undated picture provided by the Serbian daily newspaper "Politika" shows Ratko Mladic as Serbia announced on May 26, 2011 the arrest of former Bosnian military Serb leader and war criminal Ratko Mladic. (AFP Photo)

When his trail grew too hot in Bosnia in the late 1990s, Mladic moved with family to a villa near the Serbian capital, Belgrade. There, he was seen at his son's wedding, football games and fancy restaurants, refusing to give interviews and smiling quizzically when photographed.

When Milosevic was ousted from power in 2000, and Serbia's new authorities signaled they might hand Mladic to the tribunal, tabloids reported he had left Belgrade for Bosnia.

But true to his style, Mladic countered those rumors and others that said he was terminally ill, and before going underground in 2002, he was repeatedly seen driving around the Serbian capital in a Yugo.

He completely disappeared from public view in 2008 and was finally arrested in May 2011 in a village near Belgrade where he was hiding at a relative's house.

The frail-looking old man who appeared in court at the Hague was a far cry from the robust image Mladic exuded in wartime. But his defiance was intact.

"Everything you said is pure lies. Shame on you!" he yelled at the U.N. judges when they handed down the conviction.

The tribunal said at the time the crimes committed were "amongst the most heinous known to humankind." Former U.N. rights chief Zeid Ra'ad al Hussein described him as "the epitome of evil."

Ex-Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic sits in the defendant box during the hearing of the final verdict on appeal against his genocide conviction, at the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT) in The Hague, Netherlands, June 8, 2021. (AFP File Photo)

Russia on Thursday criticized the Hague, saying the tribunal that had convicted Mladic had shown "deliberate disregard for basic rules of impartiality and fair treatment of convicted persons for political reasons."

Already in poor health upon arrest in 2011, Mladic is believed to have suffered multiple strokes during his years on the run and was hospitalized on several occasions while in custody.

Serbian state officials and Mladic's family had appealed for his release due to his failing health, but the Hague tribunal rejected those calls.

Kada Hotic, 82, whose 29-year-old son and 56-year-old husband were killed by Serb forces in 1995, said she was grateful to the tribunal because it sentenced Mladic to life and has not released him.

"Justice was served ⁠on ⁠the day he was sentenced to life," Hotic said.

"He died in disgrace, because he killed so many people."

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he stood "in solidarity with the victims, survivors and their families who suffered the crimes" for which Mladic was found guilty, his spokesperson told reporters.

Gutteres reiterated his call on all those in positions of power ​to refrain from denying the ⁠seriousness of the crimes that have been adjudicated.

"He (Guterres) strongly condemns ⁠any denial of the Srebrenica genocide as a historical event, and any actions ⁠that glorify those convicted ​of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide by international courts," his spokesperson, Stephane Dujarric, said.