Aleksandar Vučić has already made violence against women a campaign issue

A woman was beaten again in Novi Sad, and the SNS is already building a national election strategy around it

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Just one day after we wrote about Aleksandar Šapić's appearance in Belgrade: linking the opposition and the student movement to violence against women may be a recurring motif in the Serbian Progressive Party's (SNS) campaign, a perfectly fitting incident occurred in Novi Sad. After that, Aleksandar Vučić and the Serbian Progressive Party immediately linked their political opponents to violence against women.

On Tuesday evening, SNS activists and supporters of the “Studenti pobeđuju” (Students Win) list clashed at the Futoška pijaca market. Footage shows a man punching a woman during the scuffle.

There are two completely different narratives about what exactly led to this.

According to the SNS, opposition “blockade” activists attacked the progressives, while the opposing side claims that SNS activists were looking for a conflict and even brought their own cameraman with them to record some incident. Informer has already named the alleged attacker, claiming that he is a bodyguard of Ilija Srdanović, the head of the student list.

Violence against women has become a national campaign topic

The incident did not start with a fistfight. According to 021, a clash had already broken out at the aforementioned location hours earlier. According to the newspaper, Vukašin Đoković, the SNS candidate for parliament, tried to take the banner with the inscription "Studenti pobeđuju", which led to a push and an exchange of words.

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Željko Subotić, a representative of the Novi Sad Forum (Zbor Novi Sad), told N1 that the students' stand was already open from 5 pm, and the SNS activists showed up around 6 pm, set up their own stand right next to them and put up their flags.

According to Subotić, there was verbal provocation first, then SNS activists tried to take flags from the students and damage their banners. Later, when more people arrived at the scene, a physical clash also took place.

Subotić also drew attention to another circumstance: according to him, the SNS people arrived with their own cameraman, who recorded the entire event. From this, he concluded that the progressives were “looking for an incident” from the outset.

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However, something happened in the second clash that progressives seem to be building their campaign on.

One video shows a man punching a woman, who reports identify as SNS activist Ljiljana Cvetković, in the head. Aleksandar Vučić immediately condemned the incident, claiming that the perpetrator was a “blokader,” or anti-government.

On Tuesday evening, a general riot broke out in Novi Sad, instigated directly by Ilija Srdanović, the person at the top of the blockaders' list. The brutality of these rascals reached its peak when one of the blockaders brutally hit a woman, an SNS activist, Ljiljana Cvjetković, in the head! - wrote Informer

The Informer, which is close to the SNS, named the man as Stanislav Krajcer and, citing its own unofficial information, claimed that Krajcer was part of Ilija Srdanović's personal security. The paper concluded from this that Srdanović sends paid men out into the streets to beat women.

However, there is no police or prosecutorial statement in the source materials that would confirm either Krajcer's identity or that he was Srdanović's bodyguard, let alone that he acted on anyone's orders.

Vučević has already blamed Srdanović

According to Miloš Vučević, the president of the SNS, Ilija Srdanović led the attack on the SNS activists. He claimed that the leader of the student list was the first to set off and then called others to follow, and therefore he is politically responsible for the beating of Cvetković as much as the perpetrator himself.

Vučević also cited as evidence that Srdanović thanked the participants after the incident for "what they did."

The happy protagonist: the woman who was hit "smiled happily" the next day in the company of Miloš Vučević, the president of the SNS, and fortunately neither her nose nor her jaw were broken (Source: Serbian Progressive Party )

However, the longer version reported by N1 sounds significantly different. Srdanović said into the megaphone:

"You did the right thing, you supported the Student List with dignity, may it remain so."

He then spoke about the next event and wished everyone present all the best. So, based on the text of the regulations, he wasn't thanking them for hitting a woman.

Violence against women is now a campaign issue in the Serbian elections

Vučević's press conference was not just about the beating of Ljiljana Cvetković. The SNS president listed the alleged violent incidents in Mirijevo, Niš, and Kula one after the other, and then organized them into a single political narrative.

According to this, these are not isolated incidents, but the consequence of the policy of the "blockadeers", which - as Vučević puts it - begins with hatred and anger, and then ends with violence, "most often violence against women".

He later repeated the same message even more clearly: in his opinion, it is not only the individual attackers who are responsible, but also the "ideologists" who create a climate of division and hatred, the end result of which, in his opinion, is primarily physical violence against women.

This is a political strategy, not a commentary on a police case. It fits exactly with what we wrote after the Šapić case: the Serbian Progressive Party is trying to structure its campaign in such a way as to present itself as a defender of order, security and especially women, and its opponents as an aggressive, unpredictable political entity that is violent towards women.

The fistfight in Novi Sad perfectly supports this.

Vučić has been talking about "woman-beating" opponents for a year and a half now

The Novi Sad incident did not actually bring to the surface a new topic; since the spring of 2025, Aleksandar Vučić has repeatedly linked anti-government protesters, activists, and increasingly also students blocking roads, with violence against women. N1 already covered the issue in a separate article in May 2025, where Vučić regularly talks about his political opponents "beating women".

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One of the earliest, quite clear statements was made on March 21, 2025. Reacting to the events in Bogatići and Niš, Vučić said that his opponents “cannot stand women,” and then added:

"They hate women terribly and enjoy beating women."

A few weeks later, while visiting the construction site of the Tiršova 2 children's hospital, he linked several previous incidents to this topic. He spoke about how he did not want a Serbia where women were chased, thrown eggs, stoned, or had their heads smashed.

This message has become even more direct for this year's election campaign. In early September, Vučić said that women make up about 60 percent of his political camp's voters, who he said value stability, responsibility, and peace. He also called on his supporters to avoid violence.

On September 22, he then directly blamed the blocking students for the accusations he had made earlier, stating in New York that his opponents were waging a "terrible campaign" against Serbian women because they "hate women."

According to Vučić, the other political side is threatening women with beatings and rape, but at the same time he sent a message to Serbian women that they have no reason to fear, because they will protect them.

The students also noticed what was happening. After the Šapić case broke out, on September 29, they said in their statement that “for days we have been hearing that students hate women, attack them and use violence against them.” Then, referring to the serious accusations against the mayor of Belgrade, they sent a message to the authorities that the protection of women cannot be made into a campaign slogan while measuring responsibility based on party affiliation.

A day later, the footage from Novi Sad arrived, showing a man punching a woman.

Aleksandar Vučić's reaction almost immediately followed the line he has been building for months: he did not condemn the perpetrator, but made the "blockade workers" the instigators of the violence, emphasizing that it is being used "especially against women."

But who ordered the incident – ​​if anyone ordered it at all?

According to the aforementioned witness, it is suspicious that the SNS activists arrived with cameras, provoked the other group, and then repeatedly tried to take their banners. He assumed that they were waiting for a scene that could later be used for campaign purposes.

Based on this, the question can be raised whether we saw a spontaneously degenerated street conflict, or whether one of the actors consciously sought the opportunity for a clash.

However, based on the sources available to us, there is no evidence that anyone "ordered" the incident.

The Novi Sad High Prosecutor's Office has already instructed the police to obtain and analyze surveillance cameras and footage posted on social media, as well as to identify the participants in the clash.

The campaign, however, is not waiting for the results of the investigation.

The image of violence against women has already been included in the SNS's election communication, in which progressives are trying to classify the political camp of the election opponent under the concept of "violence against women".