Category: Violence against citizens
Period: from 1 Feb 2026
Outcome: No one investigated (as of 21 May 2026)
In the run-up to local elections in Kula on 29 March 2026, activists from the Mladi Kula group were doused with paint and, by their account, chased into the fields at night as a shot was fired. Yet the prosecutor's office in Vrbas ruled that the misdemeanour charges for violence would be brought against the activists. On election day, masked men with clubs clashed with residents near the Hajduk stadium. According to N1, the police guarded cafés suspected of being used for vote buying. According to BIRN, a restaurant that housed an SNS campaign office received three million dinars from the provincial government after the election, and a complaint filed against its owner has gone unanswered.
On the first of February, masked men threw red paint over a Mladi Kula stand in central Kula. According to N1, the police looked on and stepped in only after the activists had overpowered the attackers. The Basic Public Prosecutor's Office in Vrbas said the activists were being charged with misdemeanour violence, while the two men who threw the paint faced a lesser offence, disorderly conduct, and that no criminal complaint had been filed.
In Crvenka on 17 March, a man came out of his house and attacked two students taking part in a door-to-door campaign. Mladi Kula also say that none of the 35 signature-certifying notaries was available to them because the SNS had booked every slot.
According to Mladi Kula, at around 3 a.m. on 26 March people in balaclavas carrying sticks used cars to chase three of their activists into the fields, and a shot was heard. Student Veroljub Naumović told N1 they had feared for their lives.
The police gave the opposite account: that a group of some twenty people with metal bars had threatened three SNS activists who were guarding campaign material. They detained one local man. The prosecutor's office in Vrbas classified the offence as endangering safety.
On election day, N1 cameras filmed masked men with clubs and bars clashing with residents outside the Hajduk stadium; one young man suffered a head injury and another person an arm injury. The police removed the crowd from the stadium, and haulier Milomir Jaćimović says it was the police who let the attackers into the building.
Residents called the police over suspected vote buying in cafés that served as SNS campaign offices, but according to N1 some of those cafés were being guarded by the police themselves; according to Vreme, groups of thugs were also in private houses. CRTA listed Kula, along with Bor and Bajina Bašta, among the places with the worst violence.
At around 17h on election day, police arrived at the premises of three observer missions run by Novi Sad citizens' assemblies in Kula with a search warrant which, according to N1, had been requested by the Higher Public Prosecutor's Office in Novi Sad on suspicion of vote buying.
Lawyers for the missions say this stopped the largest observer mission from working in the hours before the polls closed. What the search turned up has not been made public.
The coalition list led by the SNS won 19 of the 37 seats and Glas mladih opštine Kula (Voice of the Youth of Kula Municipality) won 18. Aleksandar Vučić said there had been more Zagreb number plates in Kula than local ones. Glas mladih did not accept the results and demanded a rerun of the vote at no fewer than three polling stations.
Milomir Jaćimović, who says that at the stadium he was only calling on people to protect the children, was summoned for questioning on 2 April as a suspect in inciting violence.
According to BIRN, the owner of the Kod Ćira restaurant, which housed one of the SNS campaign offices during the election, let the party use it free of charge, and on 9 April the restaurant received three million dinars in a funding call from the provincial secretariat for the economy and tourism. The party did not declare the free use of the premises in its financial report, which according to Transparency Serbia is a breach of the law.
Mladi Kula filed a criminal complaint against the owner with the police. According to their councillor, the complaint was passed on to the prosecutor's office, but by the end of May they had received no reply.