Dozens of protesters forced their way into the Belgrade headquarters of Informer TV on Monday evening and confronted its owner and editor live on air, a day after the student-backed opposition beat President Aleksandar Vučić's alliance in Serbia's snap election. Thousands of citizens had gathered outside the building, and at about 6:40 p.m. a group of several dozen got inside while the evening programme "Kolegijum" was broadcasting, interrupting the show and surrounding editor-in-chief Dragan J. Vučićević in his own newsroom.
Inside, the crowd shouted at Vučićević and his staff and demanded that he come out and publicly apologise — in their words, for years of falsehoods Informer had spread about individuals and about the student protest movement. One participant was filmed telling him to say that he "deeply apologises to his free Serbian people." Among those who had called citizens to the building was Dijana Hrka, whose son Stefan was one of the 16 people killed when a railway station canopy collapsed in Novi Sad in November 2024 — the disaster that set off nearly two years of protests. Supporters of the Student List, members of local citizens' assemblies and bikers were also reported among those who entered. Before going in, people had banged on the entrance doors and written "Studenti pobjeđuju" — "The students are winning" — on the building.
Vučićević, still on air, called the police and an ambulance and asked for a vehicle to evacuate his staff, describing the situation to viewers as a "hostage crisis" and saying doors had been damaged. His staff told the ambulance operator that a colleague was having an epileptic seizure — that is what the staff said on the call; whether any medical emergency actually took place has not been confirmed. Vučićević also phoned Ilija Srdanović, the head of the Student List, and asked him to call the crowd off. Reports differ slightly on the answer: Srdanović was reported to have said he first had to check the information, and in another version answered "I can't hear you." After the confrontation in the newsroom, the citizens moved back to the courtyard, then surrounded Vučićević again in another part of the building, filming him and repeating the demand for an apology. Whether he apologised is not known.
Police units, including riot police, reached the building shortly before 7 p.m. and formed cordons on the approaches and at the entrance. Citizens who tried to push through the cordons shoved with officers, and footage from outside showed crowds throwing objects and pyrotechnics as police moved in. Officers pushed the crowd back and evacuated Vučićević and the other employees; video showed a group of men escorting the editor out of the newsroom. Several computers were damaged inside the newsroom, and Vučićević claimed on air that doors were damaged during the entry. No injuries were reported in any coverage of the incident, and no arrests were reported either. Part of the crowd later moved on to the headquarters of Pink TV, another pro-government station, pelting the building with eggs and singing while police formed a cordon at its entrance and passing drivers honked in support.
Vučić answered that evening in a video address on Instagram. He called the break-in "unprecedented violence" and "monstrous violence — a break-in at Informer, an attack on freedom of expression, public speech and journalism," and he criticised what he called the silence of the European Union, journalists' associations and fellow journalists. He said Srdanović had refused to help, thanked "a few honourable police officers" and claimed most police had held back to curry favour with the incoming authorities. His side, he said, had "been through all this in 2000" and was not afraid. No formal statement from the Student List on the incident had been reported by Monday night.
The storming came at the end of a weekend that ended Vučić's long rule. In Sunday's snap parliamentary election, the Student List — a slate of candidates put forward by the student protest movement — took 52.65% of the vote in preliminary results from Serbia's Electoral Commission, against 39.22% for the "Aleksandar Vučić – United Serbia" alliance, and Vučić conceded defeat. With almost all votes counted, the students' candidates were set to take 139 of the 250 seats in parliament, against 97 for the alliance led by Vučić's Serbian Progressive Party. Vučić had dominated the politics of Serbia, a country of about six million people, as prime minister or president since 2014.
The movement that beat him began with a disaster. On November 1, 2024, a concrete canopy at the railway station in Novi Sad, Serbia's second city, collapsed and killed 16 people. Students led protests that grew into the largest Serbia has seen in decades, accusing the government of the corruption they blamed for the collapse — a charge Vučić denies. The protests ran for nearly two years and ended in the election that removed him. Informer — a tabloid newspaper, news portal and television channel founded and almost wholly owned by Vučićević — is widely regarded as closely aligned with Vučić and his party and has frequently attacked the opposition, independent media and the student movement itself. That record, the crowd said, is why its building was the one they walked into on Monday night.
📣 Join ProfiloPolitics on Telegram — breaking news first
Follow @profilopoliticsnews for every update on this story.