There's a young man there, a criminal, not a hero.

The more I read what the Serbian people write about Mladić, the less I believe that Vučić is stealing the elections. This ironic comment by an unknown author, which has been circulating on the internet in recent days, suggests, however, the wrong conclusion - that it is not Vučić who is corrupt and sick, but the people. In fact, it is the other way around - the more Vučić spoke ill and ruled more ruthlessly, which includes election fraud, the less the people trusted the Western media and international courts, according to which Mladić was the "Balkan butcher", the organizer of the greatest crime on European soil since World War II. And not a general and a hero.

So a more precise tweet could actually read - the more I followed what Vučić says about Mladić, Srebrenica, the crimes, and especially what he himself has been writing about these topics in the helpful tabloids for a decade and a half, the less I believed that Serbs could be saved from new disasters. And numerous misconceptions. It was a bit of an accident with Milošević, now you will see how Serbia is being killed - that is the essential motto of Vučić's rule. And then the logical epilogue of the new accident is for the Serbian people to celebrate Ratko the hero. Instead of despising the Balkan butcher and criminal. That is why the German Frankfurter Allgemeine recently correctly concluded that Serbia "was once further along in reckoning with its bloody past than it is today".

Not only Serbia, but also Mile Dodik. As he had just moved on after the end of the bloody war and the crimes committed. The more I read what Mile says about Mladić today, the less I believe that it has anything to do with his political or ideological beliefs. Rather, it is money and Dodik's bank account that are behind everything. Namely, while he was just a BiH politician living off his salary, and trying to pull the entity he represents out from under the ruins of the past war, Dodik spoke in 1996 about the necessity of cooperation with the Hague Tribunal so that criminals, not nations, would be punished. "It is necessary that everyone who committed a specific war crime be brought to justice," said Mile, not sparing Karadžić and Mladić: "And the two of them. Let the court determine whether they are guilty or not, and not to place their responsibility on the shoulders of the entire Serbian people. Guilt is an individual matter, so let everyone suffer for the crimes they committed"! Bravo, Dodik one. Especially when he publicly called out the same Mladić on RTS for hiding for years and avoiding deportation to The Hague: "The entire people in Republika Srpska and Serbia are suffering because some Mladić there decided not to surrender and go to court. And then he says he loves the Serbian people. He loves the devil," Mile D said.

And then, I assume, someone from the top of the Serbian Orthodox Church, the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, the BIA, certainly someone from the dark pro-Russian and black-robed circles of Belgrade explained to him that the Serbs needed a different narrative. In fact, the same one that led them into a spiral of violence and crime and distanced them from Europe for 100 years. Especially when it was explained to Mile that turning “someone Mladić over there” (and there really was some insignificant and uneducated soldier of the disbanded JNA) into a “hero and creator of Srpska” with room brings great financial benefits for him and his family - there was no more dilemma for Dodik. Overnight, he switched to the story of the hated West and Mother Russia, the anti-Serbian Hague and even worse Bosniak neighbors, while some Karadžić and Mladić over there became heroes and defenders of the Serbian weak. If there had been a responsible Serbian politician in BiH who continues to talk about "someone Mladić over there" and the need to lift the burden of collective guilt for the crimes and genocide committed in Bosnia from the backs of the Serbian people, Dodik would probably have been gone long ago. Defeated by some other Serbian politician who would have been spawned by official Belgrade, with a desirable narrative, accepting rather than rejecting some one Mladić over there.

The tweet from the beginning of the text could then be formulated like this: the more I listen to what Dodik says about Mladić, the less I believe he really thinks that way. Because business is business. So it only pays him more. Houses, apartments, property in Bosnia, a villa in Dedinje, probably something in Belgrade on the water, plus bank accounts from which millions are paid to US lawyers and the "deep state" - these are the real reasons for Dodik's giving up on "some Mladić over there" and his snobbery about "the hero Ratko, to whose image and work the Republika Srpska remains dedicated"! Or as another commercial, prepaid champion of the Serbian people, Milan K, would say: "Every Serbian house has a Ratko".

Of course, neither Dodik, nor Knežević, nor any similar profile of the so-called Serbian leader, based on the crimes of the 90s, and the greatest Serbian shame in history, would be possible, or rather sustainable, if it were not for official Belgrade. And its services and coffers. That is why the witty tweeter is wrong, because if Vučić had not stolen the elections, he would have moved to the opposition a long time ago. And with a different, pro-European government, the Serbian people would write much less of what is being written on the networks these days about the convicted criminal of the Republic of Macedonia.

German National Socialism was not defeated by the fall of the Reichstag and the overthrow of Hitler, but through a ten-year fundamental process of denazification that was initiated by the allied Western powers and then continued by great German democratic leaders, above all Konrad Adenauer, Chancellor from 1949 to 1963. In order to be able to bring to power and promote leaders like Vučić, Dodik, Knežević, the aforementioned dark circles of Serbian and Russian services in Belgrade created the environment for the assassination of the Serbian Adenauer Đinđić, which ruined the chance for a similar process and the liberation of the country from the toxic and vicious nationalism of the Milošević era. The German FAZ notes well that at that time, from 2000 to 2012, Serbia was further along in dealing with the crimes of the 90s than it is today. Precisely because Vučić happened. Who returned things to factory settings. Thus, the narrative about Serbia's neighbors as eternal enemies and about the criminals Milošević, Karadžić, Mladić, as heroes and saviors of the Serbs! In 1989, after the fall of communism, the black hand pushed Serbia, and thus the region, into war with the West, democracy, freedom and similar values. In order to keep it in the sphere of malignant Russian influence and everything that such a system brings - enormous corruption on the one hand and poverty and backwardness on the other.

Vučić made Serbianness a profession so that he and all his (brothers, godfathers and friends) could get rich. Dodik went from “someone Mladić there” to “Ratko the hero and role model” so that he and all his followers could get rich. Milošević replaced the previously ruling working class on the ruins of communism with the “endangered Serbian people”, just to preserve his power. And so that he, Marko, Marija u Mira, and a horde of sycophants and helpers could acquire enormous wealth. For the same reasons, our Milo, from a great Serb, became an angry Montenegrin.

While they were all filling their pockets and personal accounts, they let the people gnaw on the bone about invented injustice and enemies, a world conspiracy and the kingdom of heaven. Most Serbs are so bewitched and incapable of recognizing that their only, true enemies are in fact those who have taken advantage of them and imposed themselves as untouchable leaders. Patriotism is a refuge for scoundrels, wrote a great British intellectual and linguist 250 years ago. How much more water will flow down the Sava and Danube rivers for the majority of Serbs to understand this. And to put some criminal Mladić there, together with some Milošević there, also a criminal, and some autocrat Vučić there - in their rightful place. Treating them as leaders who have put the fate of their people at risk for personal wealth and promotion.

The upcoming elections in Serbia will therefore show whether the majority of citizens recognize the dramatic nature of the moment, that the country is on the brink of a precipice, and that it is choosing between resurrection and sinking. Like Montenegro 2020. Perhaps an unknown tweeter could respond to this by writing: the more I read what the Serbian people write about Vučić, the less I believe that even stealing the election can help him!