Sabotage in Croatia: someone cut power at Ilic's concert

Miroslav Ilic’s concert in Svibovec Podravski near Varazdin was cut short halfway through his set, and the Varazdin Police Administration has confirmed the power did not go out because of a fault. Someone did it on purpose.

Ilic was performing at a Saint Benedict’s Day celebration. At around 10 p.m. the lights went out, and not only on stage.

“I played half the concert, the power went out, but not just there, it went out across that whole area,” the singer said.

So everyone waited. The organisers called the utility company, the audience stayed in the field, and nobody turned up. Once midnight passed, it was clear there would be no second half.

“We waited until midnight, it never came, people drifted off, I got in the car and drove back to Belgrade and that was that,” Ilic said.

What the police found

What looked that night like an ordinary fault on the power line turned out to be something else entirely. The Varazdin Police Administration announced that the infrastructure had been damaged deliberately.

Police spokeswoman Petra Bosilj said an unknown perpetrator damaged a metal cabinet on a power line pole and then “grounded the live electrical conductor by lifting the handle”. The result was a power cut in part of the village of Vinica.

So no cable snapped. There was no storm. Someone walked up to the pole, opened the cabinet and pulled the handle, cutting power to the whole area, not just to the stage where the Serbian singer was standing.

Police are still looking for whoever did it. In Croatia, damaging public infrastructure carries a sentence of up to five years in prison, which makes this a criminal case rather than a story about a broken sound system.

The motive remains open. Police have not said whether the target was the concert, Ilic himself, or something else entirely. Until someone is caught, the rest is guesswork.

Why doesn’t the singer believe it was sabotage?

Part of the audience, and part of the public, immediately linked the blackout to the fact that a Serbian singer was on stage in Croatia. The story wrote itself: the show, the darkness, the silence, Varazdin.

But the man who lost his concert that night will not sign off on that version. Asked whether he thought someone wanted to stop him, Ilic kept it short.

“I don’t believe it. There’s no reason,” he said.

It is not the answer people expected. Ilic has been performing in Croatia for years and still fills venues there. His songs are sung from Varazdin to Slavonia, and he clearly has no intention of turning one night without electricity into a political subject.

What stands out is how calmly he described the whole thing. No accusations, no wounded pride, no mention of anyone’s flag. He did half the job, lost the power, waited until midnight, got in his car and drove to Belgrade. End of story, at least from where he stands.

From where the police stand, the story is only beginning. The singer’s read on it is one thing; what was found on that power line pole is another. For now the two do not match, and they probably will not until someone explains who lifted that handle, and why.

What do you think: did someone cut the power because of Ilic, or is the singer right when he says there is no reason?