The Hague Tribunal had not performed its function, nor did it bring reconciliation among the peoples, Deputy Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation Gennady Kuzmin said Tuesday evening speaking at the UN Security Council session where the verdict to Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic was discussed as the last case the UN Court for Yugoslavia would take, adding that it did not even establish justice.

Addressing Judge Carmel Agius who spoke just moments before him, the Russian representative said “We noticed the upbeat mood that you had today when reporting your achievements. You hastened to share the news about the conviction of another high-ranking Serb official. The verdict pronounced for Ratko Mladić added to the politicized stance assumed by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Now it has also stained the reputation of the Residual Mechanism..”

He asked why no one was responsible for the bombing of Serbia in 1999. Or why are they “turning a blind eye” to what the Kosovo Albanians were doing during the war?

“Soon it will be 30 years, almost one-third of a century, during which time the biased and cost-intensive Hague machinery of justice has been grinding the fates of those who took part on the war in the Balkans… The ICTY went down in history as a tool of revenge rather than a body of justice,” Kuzmin said.

He assessed that ICTY and the Residual Mechanism have not been instrumental in reconciling the diverse Balkan community. The reason for this, he said, is a shortage of fairness in the verdicts issued, bashing one side of the conflict while hushing up the wrongdoings of the others.

Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb army general, was sentenced to life in prison by the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (MICT), Tuesday, confirming the first instance verdict.