Mirjana Markovic, who as the wife of Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian leader accused of war crimes, was so politically powerful that she was branded “the Lady Macbeth” of the Balkans, died on Sunday in Russia, to which she had fled in 2003 to avoid prosecution. She was 76. It is reported by The New York Times .

Her death, attributed to complications of pneumonia, was announced by Serbian State Radio and confirmed by her husband’s Socialist Party. She had been treated in a hospital in Sochi, a beach resort city on the Black Sea.

After leading their country into catastrophic wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo that left 200,000 dead, Mr. Milosevic was the first head of state charged by an international court for crimes against humanity committed while he was in office. He died in 2006 while awaiting the conclusion of his trial in The Hague.

Mirjana Markovic (pronounced meer-YAH-nah MAHR-koh-vich), a sociology professor at Belgrade University and leader of a neo-Communist party, was suspected of complicity in 1999 in the assassination of Slavko Curuvija, a Belgrade newspaper editor, and the disappearance in 2000 of Ivan Stambolic, Mr. Milosevic’s onetime mentor.

Facing corruption charges in Serbia in 2003, she escaped to Moscow with her son, Marko, and was granted political asylum.