Attack on Filipovic: Vucic Demands Probe, Ponos Fires Back

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic spoke for the first time about the attack on Stevan Filipovic, a director and professor at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts, at the Palace of Serbia on August 6, 2026, around 1:20 p.m. He condemned the violence and said those responsible should be found, but he attached a caveat to that condemnation, one that turned into a political dispute the same day.

Filipovic was beaten on the evening of August 5 in Makedonska Street in downtown Belgrade. By his own account, he had been photographing the demolition of a protected building on the corner with Nusiceva Street just before he was attacked. The First Basic Public Prosecutor’s Office in Belgrade opened an investigation, as we reported earlier, and Zdravko Ponos, leader of the Serbia Center (SRCE) party, answered the president with a statement of his own that same evening, around 10:37 p.m.

What the president said

Vucic told reporters he condemns every kind of violence and that the job now belongs to state institutions. The key sentence, however, was not the condemnation itself but a doubt cast on the director’s account of what happened.

I would like to believe that who beat him is not his political fabrication, but that he will give adequate information to the competent state authorities. The competent state authorities will do their job, and that is what I ask and demand of them.

Vucic described his own response as clear and unambiguous in condemning the attack. But the phrase about a political fabrication is what set this statement apart from a standard condemnation and pushed it from a criminal matter into a political one, since the man who reported being beaten was, in the same breath, cast as a questionable witness to his own case.

Why did Vucic mention the tent camp outside parliament?

Because in the same remarks he opened a separate account of who condemns which acts of violence. He recalled an incident in which, as he put it, shots were fired and a man was wounded in the tent camp outside the National Assembly of Serbia, and he said there had not been enough condemnation of that at the time.

The move is familiar from earlier cycles: an attack on one person is not addressed on its own merits but placed alongside an incident from the other side of the political divide. The effect is that the conversation shifts from who beat the director to who was louder when someone else was hurt.

What Filipovic described

The director’s account of the attack breaks down into several steps:

• one attacker first grabbed his phone, which held photos of the demolition
• five more people then arrived and knocked him to the ground
• they kicked him and struck him with a metal chair
• he lost consciousness during the attack

Filipovic said he suffered a broken bone in his foot, a hip hematoma and a concussion. The number of attackers and the stolen phone are details that point the investigation in a concrete direction, since both leave a trail.

How the opposition responded

Ponos, in his party’s statement, used a comparison to question the authorities’ reaction. He asked how the state would have responded had a more prominent government loyalist been beaten in public, then answered with a string of questions of his own.

Would Minister (Zlatibor) Loncar have personally examined him and explained on television where it hurts? Would (President Aleksandar) Vucic have personally brought him oranges in front of the cameras?

The SRCE leader noted that instead of any of that, only the First Basic Public Prosecutor’s Office in Belgrade had spoken up, announcing it had opened an investigation.

The owners of the thugs do not understand that Stevan’s voice will be heard even further after this.

The opposition’s response, in other words, stayed at the level of a political message, without naming who the attackers were, a distinction worth watching until the investigation produces results.

What the investigation must establish

Prosecutors ordered three things: identifying the attackers, gathering evidence and collecting security camera footage. The location works in the investigation’s favor, since it is a pedestrian zone in the city center, where camera coverage is denser than in a residential neighborhood.

The outcome of that order is also the only real test of Vucic’s caveat. If the cameras produce faces and identification holds up, the question of a political fabrication closes itself. If the order is carried out but no results follow, the argument over who condemned the attack on Stevan Filipovic, and how firmly, will remain the only thing this case leaves behind in public view.