The first vice-president of the Serbs from Kosovo

The most wanted Serb from Kosovo who is not on the wanted list made his presence in political life official by being elected to the post of vice president of the most influential political party among the Serbs in Kosovo. At the session held on June 9, 2018, which marked the anniversary of the formation of the Serbian List, Milan Radoičić, a Serb born in Peć, was elected by the delegates of the party that rules in all ten "Serbian municipalities" in Kosovo and has a frozen status in the Government of Kosovo led by Ramush Haradinaj.

This is how this elusive "entrepreneur from the north of Kosovo", as members of the Government of Serbia, high representatives of the Serbian Progressive Party and the President of Serbia Aleksandar Vučić, legitimized himself as a true political representative of the Serbs at a time when there is talk of the need to resolve the "Kosovo issue" once and for all. The part of the Serbian public that still follows what is happening in Kosovo, especially after the unsolved murder of Oliver Ivanovic, the long-time leader of the Kosovo Serbs, who was brutally shot in Mitrovica on January 16, 2018, knows why Radoičić is accompanied by the adjectives most wanted and elusive.

BARAVAS FROM THE FURNACE: Milan Radoičić was labeled by Ivanovic himself as one of the biggest criminals in that part of Kosovo, as a man who holds everything in his hands, who decides everything "in the north" because he has money and power in his hands. Until the murder of Ivanović, little was known about Radoičić in Serbia, somehow more was kept silent than it was allowed to speak. There were publications in which it was stated that he is some kind of godfather of Zvonko Veselinović, who was "recognized" for a long time as the real leader of the Serbs from the north of Kosovo - since the "glorious days" of the defense of the crossing to Jarinja in 2011. Vučić mentions him in one of his addresses to the nation after the elections in Kosovo in the fall of 2017 and says that he is one of those who defend Serbian children. Later, after the murder of Oliver Ivanovic, Vučić denied that he had ever met Radoičić and that he had spoken with him, which he probably does not believe himself.

Radoičić, on the other hand, has been known for years by the Serbian police and prosecutor's office, who "prosecuted" him in three separate proceedings from 2009 onwards and managed to prove that he forged the identity card of a Montenegrin citizen, for which he was symbolically punished. There was no evidence to convict him of the two proceedings in which he was together with his godfather Veselinović - in connection with the construction of road infrastructure in different parts of Serbia. This was discussed in detail last winter in the weekly "Vreme" (see the article "Life, death and politics in the North", "Vreme" no. 1412).

If you are not a resident of Kosovo, you could only know about Milan Radoičić from stories and some photos. Those who are assumed to be able to know him, and are not MUP workers or his countryman Ramuš Haradinaj, behave towards him like the apostle Peter towards Jesus before his "arrest": they say that they neither know him, nor do they know what he does, nor who he is at all. Unfortunately, neither the representatives of Serbian institutions are apostles, nor is Radoičić Jesus. His biography is more like that of Barabbas whom Pilate freed in order to crucify Jesus.

SOME DO NOT BELIEVE, SOME DON'T KNOW: Kolo was led by the president of the country, who knows everything about every person and village in Serbia, and denies that he ever had anything to do with him. In the days when Radoičić's name was mentioned in connection with the investigation into the murder of Oliver Ivanovic, in the winter of 2018, Vučić said in public that he did not believe that this man would have committed or participated in such a crime, given that the feud between him and Ivanovic lasted more than from a decade and a half. Even Marko Đurić, Vučić's envoy for Kosovo and a well-known Serbian marathon runner and martyr, does not know anything about Radoičić, and at a press conference he attacked an "Insider" journalist who was trying to find out more from him about the relationship between Serbian institutions and a man with a strong criminal past. The same is happening with the Minister of Police, Dr. Nebojša Stefanović, who does not answer the journalists, but asks them if they claim that Radoičić committed a criminal act, and he should know that he did if he has read a little newspaper in the last few years.

Milovan Drecun, an expert on security issues in Kosovo and one of the longest-serving media collaborators when it comes to "happenings" in Kosovo, knows nothing about Radoičić either. He was a guest on Television N1 and looked confusedly at Minja Miletić when she asked him about Milan Radoičić - he looked like a man who was told not to mention that name.

Drecun is known for the fact that he has personally read all the evidence about the crimes of Ramuš Haradinaj and other Albanian leaders, he knows everything about the movement of international spy networks in the territory of Serbia, Kosovo and other Serbian countries, and he knows absolutely nothing about Radoičić, recently the first vice-president of the Serbian List .

Even Goran Rakić, the leader of the Serbian List, does not know much about Radoičić, but at the session where he was co-opted into the leadership of the party, he said that Vuk Jeremic's People's Party should deal with crime in its ranks and not with who Radoičić is.

WHO IS THIS MAN: Radoičić is a native of Peć, or the vicinity of Peć, that is, from the "area of ​​responsibility" of Ramuš Haradinaj when he was the leader of the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army. In the last ten years, together with his team and his godfather Veselinović, he developed businesses throughout Serbia, Kosovo and Montenegro, mainly in the field of trade and transport. From what was said about him at previous trials, he tied his career and destiny to Veselinović because he has been following him for years. If we were to make humorous comparisons, he is more Luca Brazzi and less Tom Hagen.

It seems that after the establishment of Zvonko Veselinović as one of the most ambitious Serbian businessmen in the last five years, Radoičić was left to "hold" the north of Kosovo and to maintain good business relations with his business partners from Pristina and other Kosovo centers, while the godfather Zvonko transferred his activities to Kopaonik - Corridor 11 - Novi Sad.

In Mitrovica, people avoid saying his name in public - so much fear instills in the citizens. When the author of this text last year at lunch in a restaurant in Mitrovica asked his interlocutors a question about where Zvonko is, what his team is doing, the entire bar fell silent and all eyes turned to the one who mentioned him so loudly.

Veselinović and Radoičić together with their assistants played an important role in the political life of Kosovo Serbs on several occasions, but the essence was always the same: the Serbs there had to be "encouraged" to support Belgrade's policy. Some understood this from conversations and messages, so they participated in various elections in which they would never have before 2013, and some needed to come "to the house" and to communicate the message to his face. Mainly, Veselinović and Radoičić bought their business freedom by working in the field whenever they had to: in 2011 to allegedly defend Serbia and its institutions in the north of Kosovo, and from 2013 to "change the consciousness" of Serbs and slowly draw them into "Kosovo society ".

This last political activity probably brought them the tacit approval of the international community, because the Serbs had to be "crammed" into the "Kosovo train" by all means, and we all know that there are no icons drawn by Marko Đurić on it.

photo: youtube

POLITICAL BACKGROUND: The political dimension of Milan Radoičić is particularly interesting: he appears on RTS recordings and in the Kosovo press in a different political environment since the fall of 2017. We first see him in the famous video work of the RTS reporter from Mitrovica after the Kosovo elections, in which the Serbian list, which is not the SNS, "convincingly" won. In the close-up shot, Marko Đurić is holding the phone in his right hand and talking on speakerphone with Aleksandar Vučić. Opposite him is Goran Rakić, with a freshly shaved head, with modern glasses on his nose, well-groomed and smiling. Between them, but a little behind, away from the camera, is a man with rough features, like those people who, when they laugh, show wrinkles around their eyes and on their cheeks, with a short haircut and a five-day-old beard, dressed in black. It will later turn out that on that composition, which resembles that of Nehru-Nasser-Tito from the time of the creation of the Non-Aligned Movement, that third is exactly Milan Radoičić, the gray eminence of power and wealth in the north of Kosovo. This is a man holding a giant bottle of Moët champagne in his hands, like the winner of Formula 1 races. At one point, Marko Đurić led a crowd-like chant of "Aco Srbine, Aco Srbne", and Rakić and Radoičić happily accepted.

The second picture in which we see this entrepreneur is the one in which he is meeting with Ramusha Haradinaj in a restaurant in Pristina, in a completely informal, "sports" edition. In Kosovo, it is believed that it was Radoičić who was the bond with Haradinaj that led to the fact that the deputies of the Serbian List supported Haradinaj as prime minister - that is, the man who is believed to have killed in the cradle and removed the kidneys without anesthesia. Haradinaj himself mentions him a little later in the program in Serbian language as the main man of the Serbs in the north of Kosovo.

So, the man who was "marked" as a potential culprit in the assassination of Oliver Ivanovic, a man with a thick criminal record and with an even greater reputation for how powerful he is in the world of crime, has also become a formal representative of the Serbs from Kosovo. Serbs in Kosovo are unilaterally represented by an offshoot of the Serbian Progressive Party, Srpska lista, and SNS leaders claim that they know nothing about Radoičić.

During this year, Kosovo and Serbia might have to "improve their relations" and if Belgrade is on the way to do something "big", what help can it be for the Kosovo Serbs to be represented by a man who has no credible biography and who can easily to be blackmailed?

Maybe it's all the time and the idea is for this to happen, for the Serbs, through characters like Radoičić, and the Albanians, through characters like Thaci and Haradinaj, to be forced to cooperate. Otherwise, the files will be opened, everything that was hidden will be found out, it will be seen that there is evidence for everything that sounded like a rumor.

Maybe someone thought it was a good thing, but the experience of ordinary people is not such that they would openly and loudly support people whose names they are not allowed to mention on the street or in a bar. The representatives of the "international community" come from countries that have colonial experience and have certainly met with worse characters than Haradinaj or Radoičić and they certainly know how to manipulate them. For the citizens of Kosovo and Serbia, this is by no means good news, because there is no order in countries led by people with criminal records and people who put violence before dialogue and compromise.

On the other hand, experience teaches us that this government, in the last six years, knows how to richly reward anyone who helps it in a difficult job: a tender for someone, a hotel for someone. Some city. It depends on the service.