Milan Ivanović (; born 5 February 1955) is a Kosovo Serb medical doctor, administrator, and politician. He was a leading figure in northern Kosovo's political life in the first decade after the 1998–99 Kosovo War. Ivanović was for many years the leader of the Serbian National Council of Northern Kosovo and Metohija and has been a vocal opponent of engagement with the post-1999 governing authorities in Priština. He is no relation to the late Oliver Ivanović.
Private career
Ivanović is a specialist doctor living in Zvečan. He has served on different occasions as the director of North Mitrovica's hospital centre. In 2020, he was responsible for coordinating the community's initial response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Politician
Early years (1992–99) Ivanović was a member of the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) in the 1990s. He received the ninth position on the party's electoral list for Leskovac in the December 1992 Yugoslavian parliamentary election and was not given a mandate when the list won seven seats. (During this period, one-third of parliamentary mandates in Serbian and Yugoslavian elections were assigned to candidates from successful lists in numerical order, while the remaining two-thirds were distributed amongst other candidates at the discretion of the sponsoring parties. Ivanović could have been awarded a seat despite his list position, but he was not.)
He appeared in the fifteenth position on the SPS list for Leskovac in the 1993 Serbian parliamentary election; the list won seventeen seats, and he was again not assigned a mandate. In the 1997 Serbian parliamentary election, he was given the third position on a SPS-led list in Kosovska Mitrovica and again did not receive a mandate even as the list won five of seven seats.
In January 1998, Ivanović spoke a rally in Zvečan to protest the killing of local assembly member Desimir Vasić, apparently by members of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). He was quoted as saying, "May this rally be the beginning of a merciless struggle against terrorism and against the enemies of Serbia."
Community leader after the Kosovo War
From 1999 to 2003
Kosovska Mitrovica became a divided community after the Kosovo War, with the northern half becoming predominantly Serb and the southern half predominantly Albanian. Ivanović became an executive member of the municipal Serbian National Council (SNV) in the northern half. In November 1999, the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) suspended him as deputy director of the hospital centre for thirty days after he refused to permit the reintegration of Albanian staff members who had walked off the job a month earlier. His suspension led to protests from the Serb community. Some doctors at a rally in support of Ivanović said that they opposed discrimination against Albanians but the proposed method of reintegration threatened the Serb community, while the hospital centre's management stressed that UNMIK should also ensure the safe return of Serbs expelled from other hospitals throughout Kosovo.
Ivanović was named to the executive committee of the Serbian National Council of Kosovo and Metohija on its founding in November 1999, with responsibility for health. In January of the following year, he articulated the council's policy of non-cooperation with UNMIK chief Bernard Kouchner and the mission's interim administrative council. He became known for making inflammatory speeches in this period; at a rally in February 2000, he called for the return to Yugoslavian troops to Kosovo, said that violence against Serbs from members of the Albanian community was increasing, and was quoted as saying, "Serbs feel the same as Jews in Auschwitz." On another occasion, he described French, German, and American soldiers in Kosovo as occupiers, saying, "They want to throw Serbs out of Serbian land." In August 2000, he said that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)'s takeover of Trepča Mines, which was afterward shut down by UNMIK on environmental grounds, was part of a strategy to ethnically cleanse Kosovo of Serbs and establish a Greater Albania.
In February 2001, Ivanović spoke against the return of displaced Albanians to northern Mitrovica until displaced Serbs were permitted to return safely to other parts of Kosovo. "We have nothing against Kosovska Mitrovica being a multiethnic city again, but all other parts of Kosovo must be multiethnic, too," he said. In the same period, he called for Mitrovica to be formally divided into two separate municipalities. Some media reports from this period identified him, perhaps erroneously, as a local leader of the Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS).