In vain, tenants and opposition councilors appealed to the competent institutions to stop it construction in the street on Voždovac because everything is overloaded to the point of bursting. The premonitions came true, the retaining wall collapsed, so the evacuated tenants are still outside their apartments.
The gaping hole once again opened up a topic that has been discussed for years Belgrade no one can close it: is it being built and operated with permits, or do we all have to fear that such a hole could come in front of our yard?
Only by sheer luck were there no casualties when it did On September 23, in the late afternoon, a retaining wall was demolished in the neighborhood of Braće Jerković, on a large construction site in Vojvode Vlahović Street.. Tenants were evacuated and many still have not been returned to their apartments. According to geologist Zoran Đajić for "Vreme", after visiting the field, "he had a lot to see".
"The cracks reach the buildings that are behind this one. We can see that there has also been a landslide and most certainly infrastructure pipes and sewers have burst. The material will continue to slide. We can clearly see signs that there has been a landslide there for a long time, which the designer and contractor must have known. Mistakes have been following the project from the beginning," explains Đajić.
Even before this expertise of the geologist Đajić, it was not unexpected that such a cataclysmic scenario would occur. Even this summer, the tenants explained to the television cameras that they were in fear for their safety because it was obvious that the construction was not in accordance with the regulations. Some councilors joined the appeals, specifically one of the most active, Stefan Simić, and requested that the construction site be closed.
For weeks, the contractor and the investor averted glances and criticism on their account, so that in the end everything was paid. One car fell into a pit after the retaining wall collapsed, and all residents of the surrounding building were evacuated. Fortunately, there were no injured or killed.
However, the public is looking for answers, who is to blame and why are we returning to the same problems again?
The investor, the contractor, the law - who is to blame?
Immediately after the worried looks of the nearby tenants who explained that it is "the image and opportunity of the country we live in" and that they have been "scared for a long time", the logical question of responsibility arose.
So far, two competent institutions have announced themselves: the Higher Public Prosecutor's Office in Belgrade and the construction inspection. While another institution closed the construction site and ordered a work ban, the judicial authority also filed a case with the Anti-Corruption Service corruption submitted a request to collect the necessary information.
So far, no arrests have been made, nor can it be guessed whether this could happen. However, it is obvious that there are some culprits, but the question is where to start.
Construction engineer Danijel Dašić has no doubt that the biggest blame lies with the inspection of the City of Belgrade, which had to react at the first sign of any cracks and changes, and thus prevent such an epilogue. In his opinion, if there had been more control, the damage would have been prevented a long time ago.
On the other hand, for his fellow geologist Zoran Đajić, the responsibility is closer and more concrete - it is borne primarily by the people who are on the construction site itself.
"We need to start with the designers. We don't know if he had a geomechanical study at all. The area where the foundation pit was dug and the surrounding buildings were built from deluvial clay curtains. It is a material that is very inconvenient for construction, but the one who designed it had to see it all. The person responsible here is Milan Milenković, a graduate engineer in architecture who is also the person responsible on the construction site itself. He is directly responsible by name and surname for what was being done. There is also Goran Stefanović "They personally account for everything that happens, good or bad," explains Đajić for "Vreme", specifying the direction the investigation should go.
Our interlocutor reminds us that this is why there are construction boards on construction sites, because they contain information about who is responsible for what happens on the ground.
"We have to get used to the fact that there is a first and last name behind every problem, because they correspond to their license", Đajić is clear.
Model from Dubljanska and Vidovdanska
The collapse in Vojvode Vlahović is not an incident but a phenomenon that is included in the construction portfolio in Belgrade. In the media cacophony and the daily hyperproduction of content, the case in Dubljanska Street from 2008, also in Belgrade, has almost been forgotten. The unscrupulous work of the company OPTOS when digging the foundations of the future building turned into the agony of four families, when their houses collapsed into the hole dug for the foundations. At the last moment, the lives of some family members were saved, and today there are weeds in this place. The plight of these tenants was not a topic for the local authorities.
A similar case is with the tenants in Vidovdanska Street 2a, where more than 5 years ago, in the summer of 2021, the digging of foundation pits on the construction site led to the demolition of the building on the neighboring lot.
Forgotten victims
On August 18, 2021, the somewhat forgotten Goran Vesić, as the deputy mayor of Belgrade, one month after the collapse, ceremoniously handed over the keys to the temporary apartments to the victims and promised that the new building would be built within a year. Four years since then and five years after the demolition, the situation is the same: there are no new apartments, and the families who managed to save their lives are still in temporary accommodation waiting for justice and new apartments.
Zorica Stanimirović, a tenant who was damaged in Vidovdanska, said that no one from the authorities has contacted her for years, but that now new problems have appeared. At the same time, with the collapse of Vojvode Vlahović, old images came back to her that disturbed her and reminded her of their tragedy.
"We are still in temporary accommodation. On April 5, 2022, we signed a contract with the City, which mandates that they build a building for us within 24 months in order to get new apartments. That April has long passed, nothing is happening there. Simply, we were forgotten, so we were forced to sue the City. The news is that from March 30 of this year until June, two people came to us four times to assess the value of the apartment. They came with the intention of taking pictures of the interior of the building. What do they have to assess the value of mine and the apartment? Last time, we didn't allow them to take pictures", explains the interviewee of "Vremena" and draws attention to possible pressures.
In the meantime, continues Stanimirović, the subject taps into place and institutional ping-pong takes place. No one is in charge, life goes by, but still the state thought of someone. The investor has paid his expenses, but the tenants are still living in temporary accommodation all these years.
"The investor was reimbursed the costs of 70.000 euros, and 7 families were left without everything they had. It's so terrible that I can't even explain to myself how it's possible. Imagine, the investor got 6 months of probation, and his son got a year's probation. Only in November will we have our first confrontation in court after five years," said the tenants of the former building in Vidovdanska 2a.
System problem
The mentioned cases are not just an enumeration of individual problems on construction sites, but rather an illustration of many years of calls by the profession to redefine the legal bases. Concretely speaking, without any incentive or turning a blind eye to the state structures, the construction sites would not look like the way we dissected them in the previous lines. That is why experts warn that everything leads to state authorities.
Dragan Dingarac, engineer, designer and owner of a private company, explained that there are two groups of problems.
"On the one hand, it is undoubtedly the state administration, i.e. the set of legal regulations that allows this kind of thing to happen. This did not happen now, but in the mid-nineties, when wild construction was allowed so that people could manage. The state is also responsible because the inspection services did not do their job, they were called to go to the field earlier," Dingarac explained the problems to Nova.
He added that on the other hand, the problem is the profession, that is, engineers, who have certain patterns and who, unfortunately, back down when an investor comes to them.
"Due to the growth in the doing business list, where one of the important items is the time for issuing the permit, the process has been accelerated, but not because the problems have been solved, but because the process of obtaining a construction permit is completely meaningless," says engineer Dingarac.
Šapić's Belgrade Omerta
It is no longer news that the mayor of Belgrade does not appear at the most important events in the city, so this time he decided that it is best to remain silent and not appear. Bearing in mind that there are still old problems from Vidovdanska, and that new ones have appeared from Vojvoda Vlahović, we contacted Aleksandar Šapić with the intention of getting answers, but he did not want to comment on the case with a short comment "we are free to write what we want".
Kragujevac, Prokop, Pančevac...
Not only Belgraders spent the night worried about their safety. At the end of November 2025, the retaining wall and road collapsed at the scientific complex Center for Excellence in Kragujevac, which caused quite a storm in the city in the heart of Šumadija. Fortunately, there were no injuries, but many wondered why it happened in the first place, bearing in mind that the works there had previously lasted for years. The foundations of the Center of Excellence in Kragujevac were laid by the former President of Serbia, Tomislav Nikolić, back in 2016, and were completed in 2024. They were worth more than 23 million euros, which further increased doubts about the quality despite the huge investments.
When it comes to investments, for years investments have been made in Prokop, the main railway station in Belgrade, the safety of which was discussed with great concern among passengers and the professional public. On several occasions, attention was drawn to the cracking of the platform beams, which is why the question was raised about the state of the statics on the structure used by thousands of citizens every day.
The Railway Infrastructure of Serbia practically admitted that something was wrong. Last year, that company announced a tender for the rehabilitation of the platform beams because, according to the documentation, the Materials Institute of the Faculty of Civil Engineering determined through tests that there is less reinforcement in the existing beams than predicted by the Energoprojekt project from 1996. After that, the reconstruction was carried out. How it was worked and built is perhaps best confirmed by the fact that Prokop is working hard.
The Pančevački bridge, which is in a rather ruined state, is awaiting reconstruction. Although it has been mentioned on several occasions that everything is ready for reconstruction, it is obvious that the lack of money is the key factor for prolonging the reconstruction, but also the almost non-existent alternative routes for those who live in Krnjaca, Borča, Pancevo because it is the only bridge on the left bank of the Danube.
The fact that the condition of the bridge is worrisome is also confirmed by the ban on the crossing of goods vehicles weighing more than 12 tons. The plan is to start a major renovation next year, although for now there are no firm guarantees that it will happen.
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