Kika Zivkovic: 'I Was Handcuffed to the Bed'

Influencer and hospitality manager Kristina Kika Zivkovic (37), from Sabac, has spoken for the first time about the abuse she says she has suffered for years at the hands of her ex-partner. She appeared on September 20 on Jutarnji program, RTV Pink’s morning show, hosted by Jovana Jeremic, and for the first time publicly connected the dates and locations that had previously been known only from a single video circulating on social media.

Zivkovic said the attack seen in that video took place on May 31, around three in the morning, outside the hotel where she worked as a manager, a hotel she says was run by her ex-partner. The footage shows a man approaching her and punching her in the head, after which she falls and is left lying on the ground, before he returns and drags her across the floor.

• “As for the video, everything happened on May 31, after midnight, around three in the morning,” Zivkovic said on the morning show.

The violence did not end there, she says. According to her account, it continued in the hotel apartment where she was living with her ex-partner at the time.

He kept beating me there, with a wooden bat, with a gun, I was handcuffed to the bed.

That is how she described the night on the show. She says she endured the beatings for the final two and a half years of a relationship that, in total, lasted six years. She points to his pathological jealousy as the cause of the violence, and says that because of his control she rarely visited her own family, while his mother reportedly tried to talk him out of the beatings.

• “I endured beatings for the last two and a half years,” Zivkovic said on the morning show.

She says there has been no peace even after the breakup. She claims her ex-partner continues to harass her, threatens her and her family, and that she currently has no protection of any kind. She filed a criminal complaint on September 11, after, she says, he began posting her intimate photos through a fake social media profile and threatening her, including in emails.

Police, she says, collected all the evidence at that point, and she also told them about the earlier violence. Asked why she had not reported it sooner, she said she was afraid, adding that her ex-partner once showed up at her house but that her mother chased him away.

On the show, Zivkovic also addressed her relationship with the Lazic brothers. She says the late Dragan Lazic supported her while he was alive and would come to see her after beatings, since the two were close friends. As for Darko Lazic, who had previously distanced himself publicly from his acquaintance with her, she says she does not blame him.

I don’t blame Darko for anything, I know he got threats from him too.

She explained that she understands his reaction, given that he too, by her account, received threats because of their acquaintance.

Until now, only fragmentary information about the Kika Zivkovic case had circulated, limited to the video of the assault and scattered statements to tabloids. Her appearance on the morning show marked the first time she laid out the full timeline in public, from the May attack, through the September criminal complaint, to her own explanation of why Darko Lazic stays silent about it. The case remains with police, and Zivkovic says she currently has no official protection.