Serbia in the Yugoslav Wars from the FRY, as the Bosnian Serb faction alone could not pay for the costs. The Bosnian Serb Army was led by Ratko Mladić, an extremely controversial figure, who served the Yugoslav Army during the Croatian War of Independence 1991-1992, and has been accused of committing war crimes in Bosnia. Serbian Radical Party founder and paramilitary Vojislav Seselj publicly claimed Milošević personally asked him to send paramilitaries from Serbia into Bosnia and Herzegovina. After 1993, media reports of large-scale atrocities by the Bosnian Serb armed forces, such as the long siege of Sarajevo, resulted in increased pressure and sanctions by
Bosnian War backing from Serbia and Croatia, and the decision to grant Bosnia diplomatic recognition also had implications for the international interpretation of the conflict. As Burg and Shoup state: Sumantra Bose, meanwhile, argues that it is possible to characterise the Bosnian War as a civil war, without necessarily agreeing with the narrative of Serb and Croat nationalists. He states that while "all episodes of severe violence have been sparked by 'external' events and forces, local society too has been deeply implicated in that violence" and therefore argues that "it makes relatively more sense to regard the 1992–95 conflict in Bosnia as