Serbia has been in a delicate geopolitical position for years, suspended between the
Western influence of the European Union, of which it has been a candidate for
membership since 2012, and historical ties with Russia. The government, led by
President Aleksandar Vučić and his Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), has been in
power for more than a decade and has often been accused of corruption,
authoritarianism, and eroding democratic freedoms, such as press freedom and
judicial independence. Internal tensions erupted following the tragic collapse of a bus
shelter at the Novi Sad train station on November 1, 2024, that left 16 people dead, an
event many attribute to negligence and mismanagement related to opaque
infrastructure projects. This incident triggered a wave of protests that have been
demanding transparency, accountability and a radical change in the way the country
is governed for months, culminating in one of the largest popular mobilizations in
recent Serbian history on March 15 in Belgrade.
Trojan Horse Tactics
This is how the strategy of infiltrating political or military groups within a rival
faction in order to create unrest and confusion is slangly described. That is what
happened last March 15 in Belgrade during student protests against the current
government of Aleksandar Vučić, when a series of bizarre events occurred over the
course of the day. Dejan Tomka, a planner and sound engineer who was present that
day in Belgrade, described it as the largest event ever to take place recently in Serbia,
with estimates counting some 300,000 or more protesters and “it was plausible given
that every street, every restaurant, every venue, every park was packed with people.”
The focal point of the march was the city center, Slavija Square, Pioneer Park
(Pionirski Park), located between the Parliament and the presidential palace, and the
surrounding streets. However, Dejan continued, in the days leading up to the protest
in the capital, numerous accounts from sources close to him and reliable reported that
“something big was going to happen” and that “the government was preparing a plan
aimed at shaping the public opinion of those present at the demonstration,” so that it
could have an excuse to intervene through harsher laws and permanently stop the
protests throughout Serbia.
On March 6, six students pitch tents in Pioneer Park. Their gesture is justified by
wanting to continue attending classes and not participate in protests. None of these
students is actually ever seen leaving the park to go to the university. Of the six boys,
only one is actually a university student. It turns out that they were actually placed
there specifically by the government as part of the Akademija mladih lidera
(Academy of Young Leaders) of the Srpska Napredna Stranka (SNS), the Serbian
Progressive Party, which is the party of the current local government. This program is
designed to educate and train young party members, providing them with skills in
areas such as politics, debate, communication, and strategic planning.
The first day of the park’s occupation and its subsequent development was
documented by Center for Investigative Journalism of Serbia investigative journalist
Stefan Marković: “Initially there were only students, then members belonging to
Serbian ultras groups joined in under the guise of protecting young people. The next
day, fences were erected around the entire perimeter of the park and self-styled war
veterans, members of the Serbian secret police’s ‘Special Operations Units,’ the so-
called ‘Red Berets,’ appeared. The following day additional barriers and fences were
hoisted and military tents installed, adding to the bizarre skyline that was being
created. The next day tractors emerged surrounding Pionirski Park, creating another
big barrier.” These machines were brought few days before protests, during the night
and without police reaction, and placed all the way around the park, were everybody
expected hundreds of thousands of people to gather. Confirmed sources also reported
that the government organized it and payed the peasants for the tractors.
Shortly before the Belgrade protest on March 15, rumors spread throughout Serbia
(denied only after the protests) of explosive devices being planted on the tracks of
some train stations to discourage people from traveling to the capital. In response,
Serbia’s national rail service halts transportation in the days leading up to and on
March 15 itself. Most bus companies stop services. Many protesters go so far as to
pay drivers in order to get to Belgrade. On those days also, construction sites begin to
emerge along major road and highway junctions, despite the fact that there was no
work to be done. Throughout the protest weekend, drone flights were banned, despite
the fact that they were allowed during all the protests that had taken place previously.
Despite this, 15 drone overflights were documented that weekend.
Organized armed group joins students in Pioneer Park
In the early hours of Saturday, March 15, a group of unidentifiable individuals joined
the other occupants of Pionirski Park armed with stones, bottles, clubs, machetes,
knives, hammers, firecrackers, explosive devices, and flashlights, overcoming
without resistance the cordon of officers placed along the perimeter of the park. It
appears that a group of people, dressed in masks and hoodies to conceal their
identities, were prepared to unleash confusion and disorder. Their plan was to
provoke a confrontation, a sort of scuffle or skirmish, between the men who were in
the park and some individuals who had infiltrated the protesters. These actors,
mingled among the crowd, were tasked with acting to foment conflict, perhaps by
simulating aggression or provocative behavior. The ultimate goal of this strategy was
to create a situation of chaos that would justify police intervention. Once the police
arrived, they would have the pretext to disperse the protesters, ending the ongoing
protest. Members of this group had announced a “massacre” for days before the
protest. The police on the street were separated from the public by a barricade, with
their backs to the group of individuals inside the park, completely unprotected.
This suggests that the risk coming from that direction was not anticipated or was
deliberately ignored. The photographs clearly show individuals with hammers and
various white weapons standing behind the police. In front of the barricade was
another well-organized group, equally armed and masked, with stones and
construction materials subsequently left in the street. Only after public pressure were
the concrete blocks removed, but debris and glass remained. Gasoline was spilled
from work vehicles around the park, some windows were broken, and weapons and
tools were abandoned, creating a serious security risk. The natural reaction of the
police should have been to secure the area to protect the assembled citizens, but this
was not done. By 7 p.m., the protest began to escalate, as did the first disturbances:
explosive devices, marked as “artillery impact” or “flashbangs”, were detonated from
Pionirski Park and the construction site near Slavija to scare off the protesters.
However, the incident was kept under control by the numerous police forces present.
Further testimony comes directly from investigative journalist Stefan Marković: “I
was standing in front of Pionirski Park, it was 12 o’clock and the protests had not yet
officially started. I felt that if anything happened, it would happen in that area,
because there were many people with hoods and masks.” As the protesters began to
move toward Slavija Square in the late afternoon, Stefan’s concern was realized: the
attack began at exactly 7:05 p.m., during a moment of silence for the victims of Novi
Sad, taking people by surprise. “There were people pushing and fleeing in front of
Pioneer Park although I didn’t clearly see who was there in the middle of it. There
were people with their faces covered but I didn’t know who they were.”
Limited violence occurred around Parliament, as well as reported groups of masked
and hooded individuals that were rushing from different directions towards the
building. Unidentified men took up positions on the rooftops of buildings encircling
Parliament, launching projectiles down onto the panicked crowds escaping below.
Multiple violent episodes erupted, including a savage assault on a protester by one of
these masked thugs, occurring just 100–150 meters from the Parliament building. The
victim, who was merely fleeing, was suddenly set upon by the group without any apparent provocation. Nevertheless, many observers contend that the rapid reaction
of the students, coupled with their announcement at 7:12 p.m., averted a premeditated
slaughter. The protest organizers, citing the intensifying violence, announced the
cancellation of the demonstration, triggering a widespread departure from Parliament
Square. This abrupt scattering disrupted the masked groups’ evident aim to sow
disorder and inflict injury. By choosing to terminate the protest, the students also
relinquished accountability for subsequent developments. Significantly, their
authority carried weight; protesters obeyed their directive and withdrew promptly,
effectively undermining what appeared to be a calculated effort to provoke
bloodshed. It seems the government had not foreseen this turn of events, having
anticipated that the crowd would remain and clash instead.
The issue of sonic weapons on the crowd
At the same time as the chaos in Pioneer Park, in Kralja Milana, a street two streets
away from Parliament, undocumented weapons (possibly sonic weapons) were used,
causing further panic among the crowd. It is certain that the Serbian government has
sonic weapons, some of which were deployed during the protests, making it highly
likely that they were used in the attack. Also solidifying this hypothesis are numerous
testimonies from those who were present at the time of the attack. “I was there, it
looked like someone was driving a car into the crowd or a plane landing a few meters
overhead. It felt very real.” Said one student.
“At the thirteenth minute of silence, I heard a car traveling at 200 km/h on the
highway and saw the headlights. The sound was deafening and loud and I knew a
stampede was approaching. The only thing I cared about was lifting my sister from
the curb she was sitting on, tired from the miles she had traveled in the previous 5
days walking from Loznica to Belgrade with her colleagues. I couldn’t do it. I do not
know if the sound was produced by a sound cannon, an air cannon, or some other
device, because I am not an expert. I do know that I saw people in panic, disoriented,
bewildered, terrified. I know that some of those people suffered physical injuries not
related to the stampede but caused by that noise.” reports another witness account.
However, the correlation between the videos circulated online and the location of the
vehicles with the sonic weapons installed does not match, as it is certain that at least
one of the vehicles was in the courtyard of the Parliament, hidden and visible only
from above, and therefore could not have been used in Kralja Milana, where the
videos of the frightened crowd were shot instead. The government initially denied
possessing these weapons, later refuting the statement by claiming that it had a few
specimens stored in secret warehouses, but a report published on a local television
station publicly showed the function of one of these devices. This led the
administration to admit their presence but deny their use. Lawyer and former police
commissioner Bozo Prelevic told a Serbian TV station, “A sound cannon of the Genasys brand, imported by Jugoimport in 2022, was used,” specifying that “that
sound cannon is American-made and was imported through Israel.” Military expert
Aleksandar Radic also confirmed, “It was sold by a U.S. company to an Israeli
company, which then sold it to a private company in Serbia, Romax Trade, which sold
it to a state-owned company responsible for strategic procurement, Jugoimport.” The
Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) is a nonlethal weapon capable of emitting a
sound whose intensity depends on distance: the closer you get to the source, the more
painful the perception becomes, reaching thresholds ranging from 120 decibels
(airplane takeoff), 107 decibels (first rows at a rock concert), 95 decibels (subway
car) or 88 decibels (dogs barking at a distance of 500 meters). Unlike conventional
loudspeakers, where a single electromagnet scatters sound waves in all directions,
LRAD uses a series of small drivers that create directional sound waves to amplify
the signal, concentrating the sound due to the design and size of the device, with a
point effect. In addition, the “active repulsion” system integrates millimeter waves of
nonlethal electromagnetic energy, penetrating the skin up to 0.04 centimeters and
generating a burning sensation similar to being on fire. With a frequency of 95 GHz,
a two-second pulse heats the skin to 54 °C.
“They said they had worked on the collapsed station that killed people in Novi Sad,
and then it turned out they had not. They said the helicopter pilot was drunk
(reference to March 13, 2015, when a Serbian military helicopter carrying a five-day-
old infant with severe respiratory problems crashed near Belgrade’s Nikola Tesla
Airport, killing all occupants), but then it turned out they had forced him to land in an
impossible situation. They said the infrastructure minister was not driving the car
that hit a person, and then it turned out it was him. They said several times that they
had won the election, but no one ever believed it. And now, in the midst of the biggest
protests ever, they had a device that could be used as an illegal weapon of
psychological warfare. But they say it was not used”, Dejan says.