WikiLeaks: Mladic may receive help from Russia

The Guardian reported that according to diplomatic documents leaked by WikiLeaks Serbian government officials informed US diplomats in Belgrade that Russia may be withholding crucial information regarding the whereabouts of Ratko Mladic.

In September 2009, the US chargée d'affaires, Jennifer Brush, was told by Miki [Miodrag] Rakic, chief of staff to the Serbian president, Boris Tadic, that it remained likely that Mladic was hiding somewhere in Serbia. Rakic also suggested that Mladic received assistance by "foreign sources" and that Moscow likely had better information on Mladic than the Serbian government.

There are unsubstantiated claims that Mladic may be in Russia once pressure grew on Serbia to arrest him.

In July 2009, then Dutch foreign minister, told Philip Gordon, the US assistant secretary of state for European affairs "Serbian leaders say one thing in person, another to the international press, and another to their own public."

The same documents also reveals that the US had sent a team of FBI experts in "fugitive recovery" to Belgrade to help in the manhunt and assess the Serbian operations and had proposed an 11-point plan for the arrest of Mladic. Due to resistance of then prime minister Vojislav Kostunica, none of the recommendations were ever carried out.

In a cable dated May 2009 the US embassy in Belgrade reported that, unlike their predecessors, the current Serbian government is doing as much as it could.