Let's hope that the beginning of the text does not further collapse the already not so great relationships Serbia and Montenegro. But the main characters of the joke are a former Montenegrin and his grandson. Years after one of our mighty wars, heroism and bravery, the grandfather tells his grandson about the torments he went through as a dignified warrior in the fight against a superior, bloodthirsty enemy.
By the way, this is how history is most often learned in our region, on grandfather's lap. And how reliable such history is, we can guess from our present day, when many believe the regime's propaganda more than their eyes, ears and reason. Those facts that do not fit into the created myth of a great and wise leader conspired against by evil foreign enemies, internal traitors and dark intergalactic forces are simply ignored. What fake news when it fits what I think! Think how easy it is to create a parallel history, something we have not witnessed. Especially if facts are deliberately skipped that are contrary to what we learned on grandpa's lap.
Well, let's not digress: the Montenegrin grandfather tells his grandson how, at one crucial moment, the enemy surrounded and captured his combat unit. The prisoners were, of course, not in accordance with the Geneva Conventions, offered the following alternative: either they will go for the jiji-midji variant, that is, they will be deprived of their proud male virginity, or they will be shot. They can choose. The grandson asks the grandfather which option he preferred, and he replies: "By God, they shot me!" The story is as logical as the current regime story about the sound cannon, but for decades the grandson was proud of his grandfather for not giving in to the enemy's ultimatum.
This joke fits in with the saying that was found in the title of a theater play - "Wherever I was, I died everywhere!" It also fits the character of a great leader and incompetent institution named Aleksandar Vučić, who always chooses shooting instead of jiji-jiji and who dies wherever he happens to be, for the benefit of his people. So we heard that no sonic cannon was targeting citizens and students, but was killing him, here, for about fifteen months until "the truth was finally revealed". And the "truth" is that in order to shoot him, the evil forces trained ten thousand people, let's say at a course lasting several months in Vrnjačka Banja, to simulate a sound cannon and run away rhythmically from the Belgrade street on March 15 last year. If we have learned anything from the regime's propaganda, it is that Vučić's life has been hanging in the balance for a decade and a half, and that it is only thanks to God's will that he is still alive.
We've already heard similar theories, but we shouldn't be surprised if the theory that 16 people died voluntarily under the Novi Sad canopy just to spite him also emerges.
POLITICAL ANALYSIS IN THE SULTAN SYSTEM
The first big "achievement" of the progressive government is that very soon after it got on the bones of the citizens, it abolished politics and thus called into question or even completely rendered meaningless the possibility of political analysis. Everything that is happening in Serbia, from then until today, looks much more like a grotesque than politics. At all this, a man, if he were tucked away in some far-off regions, could laugh, bitterly if he was not really a big sinner. Everything that the progressive government does is not politics but its carnivalization, something completely perverted and unreal. However, it must be acknowledged that, when we think we have seen everything, it always manages to surprise us again. With their foolishness and foolishness. Grotesque, of course, does not mean the absence of tragedy.
Many people lost their lives because of the Vučić grotesque, some suffered various forms of persecution, and some are also in exile because of it. Both the state and society suffered: the state became a dysfunctional improvisatory, and society was so deeply destroyed that it will take decades to recover. Not to mention the economy and debts. Just imagine what happened to people who have been consumers of regime propaganda for 14 years! We can see some of that from the countless comments of "loyalists" on social networks - unreal hatred and calls for the liquidation of young people, entire families of "enemies of the state" and the ever-popular "Ustasha".
Of course, it is not only Serbia that abolished politics and the possibility of political analysis. We are not talking about censorship, but about the situation when public discourse, institutional order and real decision-making centers - pass each other. Where there is no system, but everything rests on arbitrariness, passion, irrationality, ritual and personal relationships, the instruments of political analysis become insufficient, to put it mildly. Theorists say that political analysis is impossible when the conditions on which it rests disappear — verifiable facts, relatively stable rules, visible decision-making centers, autonomous political actors, and publicly expressed interests. Then we can describe the event, but we cannot establish why it happened, who caused it and what follows from it.
Maybe we are boring, but it is not worse in the story about the "simulation of the sonic cannon" to remind that in the so-called under sultanist regimes, laws are broken every day, and society lives in lies. In those countries it is not known what is private and what is public. There are no rules in them, and the rulers' interventions in all areas of the state and society are mostly unpredictable. In such countries, even the people at the top of the regime do not know what will happen tomorrow, what topics and what rules will apply, and even the ruler does not know that, because everything depends on his current mood, as well as on the complicated interests of the clientele, primarily the criminal groups he is surrounded by. Then the political analysis relies on loose things and begins to resemble a kind of court chronicle: what the leader wants at the moment, who is at his mercy and who is (no longer) at his mercy, whether behind some phenomena there is at least some kind of strategy attempt or a momentary whim that will soon be forgotten.
HEAVY WORDS ARE NEEDED
However, our work is such that we still have to try to give some sense to political follies and improvisations, and their patterns and consequences. At first glance, a person could hardly call the legally illiterate and nonsensical statement of the Belgrade Higher Public Prosecutor's Office and the accompanying media campaign, most certainly prepared in advance, with already common terms such as, for example, spin or manipulation. It requires some stronger words - such as the already mentioned "foolishness". Unfortunately, some are happy to consume nonsense either because they are in the pyramid of corruption, or because it suits them as another piece of crap in a perverted image of the world, or as an argument in an argument with a neighbor. Some also because their cognitive abilities have been minimized by years of propaganda, not only this progressive one, but also that which was created in the eighties and developed during Milosevicism; she survived two thousand years without major problems.
Let's start from the announcement itself. We all know that the Belgrade Higher Public Prosecutor's Office is a beating in the hands of the regime, the most important institution in the judicial system. The fact that this is so is not hidden even by the head Nenad Stefanović and his associates, who have repeatedly emphasized in public that this is also the task of the prosecutors: to beat those whom the regime declares to be criminals and enemies. Legal experts say that Stefanović and his associates are not burdened with legal knowledge, which has been seen many times, especially in the announcements regarding the liquidation in Senjak. By the way, this is one of the public's thesis when interpreting the latest "sound" action of VJT and the regime - to forget a little about this case, which is extremely painful for the regime.
The announcement of the VJT actually already makes a verdict - the students shot themselves with a sound cannon, and the proof of this is that some documents found in the Belgrade Rectorate mention this acoustic weapon. They must have been happy when they found this term in the minutes of the student plenum, and if they hadn't, they probably would have invented it. The students announced that it was true that they mentioned the sound cannon, but also other weapons and tools for breaking up demonstrations as a possible response of the regime to the mass gatherings. That sounds more than logical, considering that even then, a few months after the start of the protests, and probably much earlier, it was clear to them what the regime was ready to do in order to preserve power. As well as to all those who have not been sitting on ears and eyes all these years. But who cares about logic!
In the VJT statement, it is claimed that the citizens went to the doctor to report health problems due to the acoustic shock at the behest of evil forces and that they committed a criminal act. It is likely that the doctors who diagnosed the complaints also committed a crime, which some citizens submitted as evidence in a petition to the European Court of Human Rights, which, let's recall, last year ordered the Government of Serbia to prevent the use of sound devices to control civil gatherings because they "can cause serious health consequences for a large number of people."
In addition, the announcement announces that those who wanted to destroy the constitutional order with their words will also be prosecuted, which is another term for what was once called a "verbal offense". The statement, of course, does not resolve the doubt that tens of thousands of people practiced diligently to carry out a coup d'état after simulating a sonic boom, and none, but none of them, undertook any activity in that direction.
IS THERE SENSE IN MEANINGLESSNESS?
There is no doubt that this broadband action is premeditated. It is difficult to say that it was carefully prepared for nonsense, but that some time was spent on it and that numerous meetings were held - that is clear. Immediately after the outburst of VJT, a campaign was launched in the regime media. "The truth has come out", verdicts have already been passed, lists of people who participated in the "conspiracy" and who should be silenced have been prepared in advance, and have appeared on social networks.
In addition to students, verbal delinquents - analysts, experts and journalists - were especially targeted. Aleksandar Radić, a military analyst, was taken into custody the other day with the special lust of the regime, and his means of communication were confiscated... Maybe, to joke again, it will turn out that Radić carried out an acoustic attack on the citizens from his mobile phone. Beta editor Vojkan Kostić, who reported on the search of Radić's apartment, also had a meeting with the interior of the police station.
Therefore, the goal was certainly to activate the media bomb. And what is the meaning of that bomb? As we have said, if it is not the main motive, it was certainly important to the regime to divert attention from the "Milic" case, in which the VJT defamed itself through statements that contained complete falsehoods and whose obvious goal was to relativize the role of the police general in the "27" case. We will not go into what is behind this case, but certainly nothing good for the regime. Milić knows a lot, he is an unpleasant witness. At the same time, the calculation is also related to giant criminal groups that spin billions of euros and that have very complex relations with the regime. And who knows what else.
Of course, there is also the need to "solve" the incident of March 15 last year. The regime did not do well then. Vučić claimed that Serbia does not have sound cannons at all, and it turned out that it does. Just as he claimed immediately after the fall of the Novi Sad canopy that "it was the only one that was not renovated", so with the speed of light on social networks it was determined that this was not true. It later turned out that police sound cannons were on the streets of Belgrade that day. The problem for the regime is that in the newsroom of "Informer", in a live broadcast, regime members DJ Vučićević and Vladimir Đukanović celebrated the use of a sound cannon. They didn't even hide that they knew it would happen. "Vul, congratulations!" - shouted the owner of "Informer". After that, someone told them to "make up" a little.
Then Čedomir Jovanović confirmed that the sound cannon was used without knowing that it was in a live broadcast, and the always well-informed Tanjug journalists nodded their heads at his claims. Will all of them be invited to an informative interview or will they be liable for a verbal delict? Just work!
If we add to this the goal of having students and other political opponents, even independent journalists, declared terrorists and extremists by the media once again, and creating an opportunity for Vučić to look at the "established truth" by self-victimizing himself for the millionth time - it is possible that this exhausts the motives of this foolishness that rings to the heavens.
But it is possible that in their minds there is also a desire to liquidate the most dangerous opponent, the student movement, before the upcoming elections. That the court declare it a terrorist and extremist organization, and that it be prevented from participating in the elections. It sounds unrealistic, but it does not mean that there is no such plan. Just as it does not mean that the plan will be abandoned at a moment's notice if it is realized that it will do more harm than good.
There is no doubt that the regime in Serbia is dreaming of Putin's dream - that only those to whom Vučić gives a license participate in the elections.
Prelevic: Radić also spread false news that Serbia did not qualify for the World Cup
Lawyer Božo Prelevic assessed for "Vreme" that the VJT statement, the media campaign that followed it, as well as the proceedings initiated against the military analyst Aleksandar Radić, who is represented by his office, represent an attempt to divert attention from other important events, but also to relativize the case of the use of a sound cannon during the protests in Belgrade.
According to him, the goal is to divert the public's attention from the murder in the restaurant "27", as well as from the call of the Kosovo war crimes prosecutor to the citizens of Serbia to participate in the proceedings in Kosovo, in accordance with the protocol signed by Belgrade and Pristina.
"I think that is the essence. The third reason is the need for the authorities to tell the UN Committee for the Prevention of Torture and the European Commission that the proceedings regarding the sound cannon are still ongoing, that it has not been forgotten. They need to be able to say: 'It is not yet known what happened, the prosecutor's investigation is being conducted and we will see what it will show'. This is an attempt to relativize the entire case," said Prelevic.
He does not believe that this procedure could lead to a court ban on the student movement, nor to its declaration as a terrorist or extremist organization, in order to prevent the movement from participating in the elections. According to his opinion, it is primarily about intimidation of students, journalists, analysts and other public figures.
"The student movement does not have any attribute on the basis of which it could be declared a terrorist organization and thus prevented from participating in the elections. Its goals are known - the rule of law. It is not even possible to judge with a magic wand that a movement that advocates the rule of law is a terrorist or extremist organization. There is no terrorist organization whose goal is the rule of law," said Prelevic.
He added that the President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, "can declare anyone a terrorist", but that, in his opinion, such an accusation would not be able to survive in court, "whatever he may be". He reminded that he was among the first to publicly say that a sound cannon was used during the protest, while Radić made a similar assessment in other media a few tens of minutes later. "Now, in a complete inversion, those who were victims and were shot at will become the accused, and those who shot will become the victims. The one who arrests the injured will now turn out to be the victim. It is a complete replacement of theses," he said.
Speaking about the search of Radić's apartment, Prelevic ironically assessed that the investigation could be further expanded. "I am afraid that Vučić will give an order to expand the investigation, because, as far as I know, Radić also spread false news that Serbia did not qualify for the current World Cup. I will not say 'joke aside', because this is all just for fun," said Prelevic.
He assessed that Radić's apartment was searched in order to find anything that could fit into the predetermined construction of the case. "Why did they search his apartment? Just to find something that, in that wider view, they will be able to qualify as they see fit," he said.
Prelevic expects that he himself will be invited for an interview, but adds that he would like it to happen. "These are all announcements that indicate that Vučić will not stop with this. Therefore - welcome", concluded Prelevic.
Ponoš: "Simulating a sound cannon" - preparing the regime for the elections
The president of the Serbia Center Party (SRCE) Zdravko Ponoš assessed in an interview for "Vreme" that the case of "simulating a sound cannon" was not just an attempt to divert attention from numerous affairs connected with people close to the government, but also part of the Serbian Progressive Party's preparations for the next elections. Ponoš is one of the actors who were targeted by the progressive campaign because of the claims that a sound cannon was used against students and citizens in Belgrade on March 15.
"One would have to move within the limits of their corruption and have a criminal mind in order to understand what all their intentions are. This did not come from legal logic, but from a criminal way of thinking," says Ponoš.
According to him, one of the possible explanations is that the government is trying to cover up other events that are, to put it mildly, unpleasant for the regime. "They have a lot that they want to hide from the public. Little by little, some confrontation, little by little, someone gets killed in broad daylight, and it's always about teams that are close to them - some have a party membership card, and some have their bank card," he says.
However, Ponoš believes that behind the whole action there is a more serious political goal - preparing the authorities for the next elections. As he said, the previous progressive election model was based on Aleksandar Vučić being in the foreground, but that no longer gives results. "Until now, it was enough to put Vučić in the foreground, whatever the election. Now it no longer works. A lot of negative points have been accumulated in all public opinion polls and they can no longer go to the next elections, whenever and wherever they are, with the story that Vučić is winning," says Ponoš and adds that this is why a new political message has been devised - "Serbia is winning".
"In order for their Serbia to have someone to defeat, there must be someone who is allegedly destroying Serbia. They failed to find the key to unlock the student movement. Whatever they did, they were not even able to establish who its key players are. The government's goal is to bring students, the opposition, free-thinking citizens and journalists under the common category of 'destroyers of the constitutional order'. They want to create a binary division: on the one hand, there are those who allegedly destroy the constitutional order, and on the other, those who, supposedly, they are defending. Then they can say: 'We are winning - Serbia is winning.'
Ponoš, however, stated that the reality is exactly the opposite. "The constitutional order is being destroyed by Vučić and his regime. Everyone who took to the streets to demonstrate, all of us who fight against it on the street, in the Parliament or in the media, are actually defending the constitutional order from Vučić and his party, who are destroying it," said the president of the SRCE party.
Ponoš does not consider it realistic that the goal of the entire action is the court's declaration of the student movement as a terrorist or extremist organization and the banning of its participation in the elections. "I think it would be suicidal for Aleksandar Vučić, because it would produce an unprecedented rebellion of citizens. He can try to disavow the student movement, but if he tries to ban it - he would be better off shooting himself in the foot right away," says Ponoš.
Aleksandar Radić: I believe in the duty to continue the fight despite personal losses
I believe in the duty to continue the fight despite personal losses
Aleksandar Radić's phone, documents, computer and other equipment were confiscated after several hours of searching the apartment and other premises, carried out by order of the Higher Public Prosecutor's Office. Although Mup members took him out of the building with a police escort, he was soon released. On Tuesday (June 23), he and his lawyer stayed at the VBA premises because of the military police summons that was served to him the day before.
As he points out for "Vreme", he has previously had bad experiences with these structures and their radical violation of regulations: "On one occasion, they accused me of an event that does not exist. They even set up lawyers who are employees of the VBA, to prevent me from suing them for submitting a false report. Since 2018, since Đuro Jovanić (head of the VBA) was appointed, they have invested an incredible amount of energy to stand in my way."
He says that the fact that all of his electronic data carriers were taken leads him to the conclusion that they want to see all of his sources.
"I have a lot of things related to the military. My research topic includes modern history from the Second World War onwards. Many times I have had access to military materials with the permission of the structures - so how else can you access it? I have written books and texts about the history of the military", explains Radić. He adds that since "SNS started tightening up", he stopped publishing, but continued to do his work in the hope that one day the situation will change.
For the sake of interest - since 2012, the army has published two books for Aleksandar Radić.
"For one, Aleksandar Vučić wrote the foreword, because he was the Minister of Defense at the time, and for the second, Vučić called me to tell me that he would pay my fee. I said then that I thought the payments were made by the secretary."
Something that began in 2017 as a cooling in relations with the Serbian Armed Forces has gained much more dangerous momentum in recent months.
"Last year, trying to compromise me, they published a classic scandal with my fake biography, in which I am allegedly a spy, you don't know whose... They are trying to find a weak point in me, inventing stories, and you can do anything with lies - here Vučićević is talking about how they search my safes and see if I have any money. They can claim that I am black, that I have devil horns. They only need a semblance of legality for this kind of mechanism."
These days, Radić was supposed to finish the article on NATO's eastern wing, as well as the article on the Serbian missile system, but now everything is on pause. The computers necessary for his work were taken along with a pile of notes and data.
"I have been systematically collecting information about the army since the fifth grade of elementary school; I often use some that I received 40 years ago. My continuity of work has been destroyed. Eleven books, which are in some stage of preparation, are now trapped in their hands. But I hope that they will at least read them. Although, a forlorn hope... If they read something, they would know that they have to follow some order and regulations."
THEY WILL NOT STOP: When asked if he thinks he is endangered, he replies that he is extremely endangered and exposed, and that he expects further attacks at any moment.
"I don't think they will stop and that their desire to throw me out of the game is very radical. They are irritated by the fact that we exist. They have started to create their own media and analysts in parallel. They have hired their associates, so-called analysts who, unlike me and my colleagues, have never served in the army or worked in it. The VBA has created its projects from people who have no connection with the army. They are favored because they are politically suitable and will say what the government wants to hear. That is sharp division: if you are not on our side, you are against us. The expected radicalization is at work."
Radić believes that the essential goal of the government is to "break" all inappropriate votes - both individuals and the media - before the elections. "Someone will be detained, someone will be expelled from the country, someone will be exiled from the media reality", he adds.
What could be the answer to that?
"I am 54 years old, I grew up on partisan films and I believe in the duty of us citizens to continue the fight, despite personal losses. There is no structure that scares me. I have been without income for a long time, but I have proven that I am stubborn and will not accept the betrayal of the idea of a normal society. There is no pathos here. The only problem is that they are corrupt, narcissistic and cannot understand that there are people who do not think like them. They cannot believe that we on the public stage really exist from beliefs and that there are newsrooms, like 'Vremen' and others, and individuals who will continue to do their work despite the enormous damage and pressures", says Radić.
Vojkan Kostić: Making assessments in this situation is hard work
Making judgments in this situation is a difficult business.
A day after we learned from the VJT announcement and prosecutor Miodrag Marković's guest appearance on the public service that the students in the blockade were suspected of "simulating the use of a sound cannon, the Kafkaesque-Orwellian flow of the local reality gained additional momentum. On Monday, June 22, the news arrived - "Informer" announced it before the event itself - that the police searched the apartment of military analyst Aleksandar Radić, and he received an invitation to report to the UKP the editor-in-chief of the "Beta" News Agency, Vojkan Kostić, while he was reporting from the aforementioned search.
"Although I am being charged with a very serious crime related to organizing the overthrow of the constitutional order (Article 320 of the Criminal Code), they were actually only interested in one thing - how Mr. Radić's phone was found in my possession", this is how Vojkan Kostić sums up his answering Directorate of Criminal Police.
He explained to them: after they saw the news about the search of Radić's apartment in the pro-regime media on the way to the scene - which at the time had not even begun - Radić decided in the elevator that the journalists would call him constantly, so he handed over the phone to him for safekeeping until the search was over.
"At some point they concluded that the phone could easily be with me. They asked for it, and I asked them to tell me on what basis and to identify themselves." He says he could have assumed it was the police, but nowadays everyone presents themselves as the police.
After that he handed over the phone to them. Two hours later he received a call to report to the police. In Sivo, the police officers were correct and professional, in contrast to the situation at the scene the day before (June 22).
How does he see the events of the previous days?
"On a tactical level, I think it's about intimidating all individuals and media who are ready to say, that is to say, that a sound cannon was used against citizens in Belgrade on March 15, 2025. I'm not going into whether that claim is true or not, but I think it's the job of professional media to convey what's relevant to the public, the words and assessments of the relevant interlocutors, because that's precisely the public interest and the essence of the actions of every decent media that adheres to the standards of the profession," he says. Kostić.
On the other hand, he believes that this story was activated because there was an accumulation of high-profile scandals by the authorities - the murder in Senjak - which is a big PR problem for the ruling group - then the departure of a group with security interesting biographies to Tivat... Kostić therefore assesses that the events of the previous days serve as one of the so-called covers for the mentioned scandals.
What could be expected next?
"I hope that the media effect that the government wanted has been achieved and that it will stop now," says Vojkan Kostić and adds: "However, I didn't even believe that it would come to this. Making some assessments in this situation is a tough job. Because when I make assessments, I think from my shoes - as a rational person who has no personal interest in it. And whether that description can be applied to our government, I'm not really sure."
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