It is time to leave wars in history and build the future together

Ratko Mladić has died.

What remains behind him are final convictions for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. But above all, what remains are the dead, their families, and societies that have been carrying the consequences of war for more than three decades.

His death will not bring back a single victim or heal the wounds. But it can be a moment in which we decide what we no longer want to carry into the future.

Generations of people across the territory of the former Yugoslavia grew up with wars they did not start, hatred they did not create, and divisions that are still presented to them as their only possible fate.

We refuse to believe that this is our destiny.

After its most devastating wars, Europe chose cooperation over conflict, institutions over weapons, and solidarity over hostility.

That is the European idea we want for Serbia. And the Serbia we want in Europe.

We do not want forgetting or the relativisation of crimes. We do not accept collective guilt for any nation.

We want truth, accountability and peace.

Ratko Mladić now belongs to history. It is time for the politics that left behind the dead, the displaced and generations taught to fear their neighbours to belong to history as well.

That is why today we want to talk about life after him: about a Serbia that will not look for enemies among its neighbours, about a Balkans where borders become invisible and people cross them without fear. And, above all, about a generation to whom we will finally leave something better than our wars.

We can live in peace, cooperate and help one another.

Europe is proof that nations do not have to remain prisoners of their worst history forever.

It is time for us, too, to finally step out of ours and move towards the future.