Dragan Milic Surrenders Weapons, SNS Attacks Escalate
Police ordered Dragan Milic to surrender his weapons on August 4, he handed them over in Nis two days later, and Nis SNS attacks against him have intensified ahead of the election cycle.
Dragan Milic, a cardiac surgeon and founder of the Movement for the Decentralization of Serbia (PODES), was stopped on the morning of August 4, about 30 meters from the building where he lives in Nis. Two police officers handed him a decision opening an administrative procedure to review whether he still meets the conditions for holding weapons, giving him 48 hours to surrender two rifles and three pistols to the Weapons Department of the Nis Police Directorate. The stated reason was that he had failed to submit a medical certificate confirming he met the conditions for holding weapons by February 21, 2025.
Two days later, on the morning of August 6, media reported that Milic had entered the Nis Police Directorate building carrying bags and boxes and had handed over the weapons. He announced he would file a criminal complaint against the Informer news portal over claims that he had been arrested and that an arsenal of weapons had been found in his possession.
What Milic Says About the Weapons’ Origin
Milic told the officers that he owned the weapons legally, held all the required permits and a weapons card, and that no one had ever notified him of an obligation to renew his medical certificate. He specified that the weapons had been inherited from his uncle, Lieutenant Colonel of the Serbian Army Zvonimir Milic, and from his father, Dr. Jovan Milic.
He filmed the stop himself, on his phone. In a social media post, he claimed that a media outlet had also been tipped off in advance about the police coming for him, since it filmed the scene:
It’s interesting that about this ambush, apparently arranged by the competent police authorities, the outlet mockingly known as “Dezinformer” was also informed, since it filmed my detention.
Footage published by Informer was presented alongside a claim that Milic had been found carrying firearms without documentation, including without a valid medical certificate. Milic denies that claim and says he will take the matter to court.
Why Was the Procedure Launched Seventeen Months After the Deadline?
The date on the decision itself is what shifts the story from weapons to timing. His obligation to submit a medical certificate expired on February 21, 2025, yet police delivered the decision on August 4, 2026, more than seventeen months later, in the same week that the Nis branch of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) launched several parallel moves against him and against the municipality where his citizens’ group holds a key role. Milic used that gap as an argument, on camera, as officers handed him the paper.
You are actually serving me a decision on my own disarmament here. Do you have any such decision for the people who tried to kill me on March 23, 2025, when they shot at the window of my apartment? Did you disarm those people? Did you disarm the people who killed inside the “27” restaurant at Senjak? Is the mafia in this country being disarmed, or is it only ordinary citizens who get disarmed? You are actually disarming the opposition, and elections are coming.
The shooting at his apartment window in Nis on March 23, 2025 is a separate case, and Milic has already spoken publicly about obstacles in that investigation. The proceeding over his expired medical certificate and the shooting investigation have no legal connection, but Milic places them in the same sequence.
Government Reactions and Accusations of Treason
Alongside the media coverage, the SNS City Board in Nis, the mayor, party commissioner Dragoslav Pavlovic and the party’s youth wing all spoke out. They called Milic a traitor and an extended arm of Albanian separatists, and Pavlovic said the PODES leader was working against the Serbian state.
The trigger for that wave of reactions was not the weapons but a social media post in which Milic criticized the demolition of a hotel owned by a Serb in Gazivode on July 30, carried out with the assistance of Kosovo police. In the post, he recalled an earlier statement by Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic that he would not give up Gazivode.
On August 5, SNS youth activists stood in front of the Medijana city municipality building and filed a request for information of public importance about the use of the municipality’s official car. Medijana municipality president Mladen Djuric replied that the vehicle had not been driven at all in 2025 or 2026, had used zero liters of fuel and had not carried a single travel order.
Medijana, Rallies and an Open Case
Milic placed the entire episode in a pre-election context without qualification.
This kind of harassment, these elements of state terror, are a prelude to election day, when the Progressive Party’s criminal organization, aware that it no longer has majority support among the people, plans to hold on to power at any cost. But terror no longer works in Serbia, and neither does fear.
The Medijana city municipality in Nis, where his citizens’ group holds a key role, remains the point around which both the local and the national campaign are being fought. Milic has also started a series of pre-election rallies called “Serbia or the Mafia,” with the first held on August 6, featuring speakers Milo Lompar, Aleko Kavcic and Ivan Ninic.
The administrative procedure at the Nis Police Directorate is not over. Surrendering the weapons carries out the decision, it does not settle it, and what happens next depends on whether Milic submits the medical certificate and requests the weapons back, as well as on whether, and when, the announced criminal complaint against Informer is actually filed.
