Written by: Tomislav Marković
After an unknown individual – possibly from Serbian intelligence or police – carried out a terrorist attack using a sound cannon on Serbian citizens who were silently paying their respects to the fallen under a bus stop in Novi Sad, officials were quick to call in experts to confirm that no attack had taken place and that this mysterious sonic weapon didn’t exist at all.
Aleksandar Vučić summoned both the Russian FSB and the American FBI to investigate. Meanwhile, Aleksandar Vulin – a man who received a medal from the FSB for "successful cooperation" (or as it’s called in Serbian, "high treason") – announced that “the FSB will look into this as soon as possible” and assured the public that “Russia supports Serbia in the fight against the color revolution”. Shortly afterward, officials informed the public that Federal Security Service agents had already arrived in Serbia and begun their investigation.
FSB: The Perfect Agency for the Job
Our reality has become so absurd that even the most naïve person would struggle to believe it. Everything is so surreal and nonsensical that it’s almost physically painful, as if we’re trapped in some Monty Python sketch – except ours isn’t particularly funny. Calling in the FSB to investigate the use of illegal weapons in Serbia isn’t just propaganda or gaslighting anymore; it’s outright mockery of the public’s intelligence.
And why did FSB agents have to travel from Russia? They could have just stopped by on their way from the Russian Humanitarian Center in Niš to Belgrade. Vulin himself could have checked out the so-called sound cannon – though I suppose that might not be in his job description.
That said, the FSB truly is the perfect organization for this kind of work. Investigating sonic weapons in Serbia might not be their highest priority, but before they rush to clear Putin’s loyal poodle, Aleksandar Vučić, of any wrongdoing, perhaps they should focus on more pressing matters. For instance, they could look into who among Putin’s opponents has been poisoned with Novichok, who arranged for so many people to mysteriously "fall" from windows, and who is behind the numerous unsolved murders of journalists, activists, politicians, and other Kremlin critics.
And while they’re at it, they might also want to investigate the fate of their former colleagues – the ones who dared to break away from the Kremlin’s grip.
Ana Politkovskaya, a prominent journalist for Novaya Gazeta, known for her reporting on human rights violations in Chechnya, was murdered on October 7, 2006, outside her apartment in Moscow. Her death drew international condemnation, yet the masterminds behind it remain unidentified. Anastasia Baburova, a journalist and activist with Novaya Gazeta, was killed on January 19, 2009, in Moscow, alongside human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov. Baburova had been investigating neo-Nazi groups and political violence.
Murders with the Signature of the Secret Services
Igor Domnikov, a journalist for Novaya Gazeta known for his witty essays and sharp commentary, was attacked on May 12, 2000, in front of his Moscow apartment. He succumbed to his injuries on July 16, 2000. Five members of the gang responsible for his murder were convicted, but the masterminds remain unpunished. Yuri Shchekochikhin, an investigative journalist and deputy editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta, died on July 3, 2003, after suffering a mysterious and severe allergic reaction. Shchekochikhin had been investigating high-level corruption in Russia. Natalia Estemirova, a human rights activist and collaborator with Novaya Gazeta, was abducted on July 15, 2009, in Grozny, Chechnya. Her body was discovered the same day in neighboring Ingushetia. Estemirova had been investigating human rights violations in Chechnya.
Although primarily known as an opposition leader, Alexei Navalny was also an investigative journalist who exposed corruption at the highest levels of government. After being poisoned with the Novichok nerve agent in 2020, he recovered in Germany but was arrested and imprisoned upon returning to Russia. He died in prison in 2024 under mysterious circumstances.
Irina Slavina, the editor-in-chief of the independent portal Koza Press, known for criticizing local authorities in Nizhny Novgorod, set herself on fire in front of the police station on October 2, 2020. Her actions came after her apartment was raided by police who attempted to frame her with false charges. She left a note stating that the Russian Federation was responsible for her death. The FSB agents might want to dig deeper into the pressures and repression that drove Slavina to take such a drastic step.
Viktoria Roščina, a Ukrainian journalist reporting on the conflict in Ukraine, died while in Russian custody, becoming the ninth journalist to lose their life while covering the war. Her death underscores the dangers faced by journalists reporting from war zones under Russian control. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 58 journalists have been killed in Russia since 1992, many during Putin’s rule. Numerous cases remain unsolved, suggesting an atmosphere of impunity and a continuing threat to media workers in the country.
A Criminal Legacy
This is exactly the kind of work the FSB agents should focus on, instead of wasting time on things like the sound cannon, which, by the way, was shown to the cameras by Serbian police minister Ivica Dačić. Investigating such cases wouldn’t require much effort or resources; all the FSB agents would need to do is look in the mirror to find the perpetrators. A far more challenging investigation would involve looking into the crimes committed by their organization throughout history, under various names such as the KGB, NKVD, and Cheka. For instance, they could at least try to figure out how many of their citizens were killed during the Stalinist purges when the Gulag system was operating at full capacity.
They don’t need to provide an exact number – that’s nearly impossible at this point – but they could at least inform the public whether they murdered 15, 20, or 30 million people, just so we have some idea. In December 2021, Putin dissolved the NGO Memorial, which was dedicated to the victims of Stalin’s regime. This makes sense when you’re continuing Stalin’s work and don’t want to be reminded of the inconvenient truths about your criminal past. At the request of the state prosecutor and by the decision of Russia’s highest court, Memorial was banned for presenting “a false image of the Soviet Union as a state of terror”. It’s unclear who is more truthful – the Russian courts, the Kremlin, or the FSB – but one thing is certain: Serbian authorities made the perfect choice in investigators for the sound cannon case.
The FSB is a criminal organization whose job is to persecute and destroy the opponents and critics of a tyrannical regime, just like its infamous predecessors. Calling the FSB in to investigate something is more absurd than calling Baron Munchausen to determine if something is true or false. Expecting the truth from FSB agents is like asking Kira Janja to become a spendthrift. That’s why Vučić called them – so they could lie in his favor, as they had already helped him suppress the popular uprising.
Well-Trained Bloodsuckers
It’s helpful to paint a clear picture of the kind of people we’re dealing with. In the foreword to Anna Politkovskaya’s book Putin’s Russia, Pavle Rak quotes an exercise from a 2000 intelligence training manual. Here’s an example from the manual, designed for future secret agents: “Getting used to stabbing, spilling blood, and inflicting wounds on living creatures. Special exercise: trap a live rabbit, kill it by smashing its head against a tree, tie its hind legs, quickly sever its head, then drink the blood that spurts out and exhale”. (…) Psychologically, it’s not easy to kill a defenseless creature for no reason, but without such preparation, it would be even harder to kill an innocent civilian who just happened to see our unit in enemy territory”.
In other words, Russian agents are bloodsuckers, and they’re well-trained according to official protocols. Once you’ve practiced on rabbits regularly, after a while, poisoning, shooting, or throwing someone out of a building doesn’t seem so hard. Turning human beings into terrified rabbits is one of the core goals of a totalitarian system, and murder is an effective means to achieve this transformation.
Pavle Rak provides a brief commentary on the quoted passage: “In a country that not only publishes such manuals but also distributes them to ‘members of military-sports and military-patriotic clubs, survival school students, tourists, hunters, fishermen, and anyone else who wants to learn how to overcome any danger’ (from the book’s annotation) – the worst things can happen. In a country run by former secret service officers, such manuals exist, and the worst things happen. All the citizens of such a country are like trapped rabbits, whose heads will be severed and blood drained if it ever crosses the minds of these skilled intelligence officers that it’s necessary to do so”.
Decades of Radiation from the Kremlin
Such a country is the ideal environment for any other Vučić, Vučević, Vučićević, and the rest of the Vulin clan. They are doing everything they can to turn Serbia into a state where everyone outside the ruling oligarchy will be treated like lab rats. And they are succeeding – the country is rapidly descending into tyranny, where human life is worth no more than a puff of tobacco. Here is just one example from a few days ago: According to media reports, in Ub, M.M. (1983), accused of theft, committed suicide by hanging himself in a police vehicle while being transported to jail.
After the judge ordered his detention, the accused attempted to escape, but the police caught up with him, placed him in a “paddy wagon”, and handcuffed him. Then, a man with his hands cuffed, in a police vehicle, surrounded by officers, managed to hang himself? He wasn’t Houdini. This is even more bizarre than the endless window incidents in Russia. And yet, no one says a word – the public remains silent, as if in a deathly slumber.
Unsurprisingly, Vučić and his cronies have called on the FSB for help; it’s a match made in heaven. What’s truly shocking is the lack of a strong public reaction to this move. The opposition, students, citizens protesting, assemblies, professors, lawyers, various civic organizations – no one is stepping up to say, clearly and loudly, that Russian criminals cannot just roam freely around our country. No one is calling for the expulsion of Putin’s agents from Serbia. No one is speaking out against the propaganda peddlers of Putin’s regime.
Who knows, maybe the fact that agents of an organization whose ultimate goal is the extermination of the entire Serbian population are wandering around our country isn’t something to worry about. Perhaps our self-proclaimed democratic public thinks differently – since we’re already exposed to decades of radiation from the Kremlin, the effects are permanent and incurable, so there’s little point in protesting something as trivial as the FSB’s criminal activity in Serbia. But it would be nice if someone would let us know that this is the prevailing mindset – if our noble fighters for a different society believe we’ve already capitulated and given up on ourselves, it would be good to know that too.
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