Aleksandar Vučić and the Sarajevo Safari: The shadow of a macabre massacre that Serbia can’t escape from its criminal past

Has Serbia truly broken away from its criminal past, or has it simply produced a refined version of Milošević’s political project?

Recent reporting has refocused the public’s attention on one of the darkest chapters of the Bosnian War: the inhumane practice known as “Sniper Safari”, in which civilians in Sarajevo became targets for the macabre entertainment of foreign tourists. What had for years been treated as a story about paramilitaries linked to the Serbian military is now taking on a new dimension. The accusations now involve not only the criminal groups of that era but also Aleksandar Vučić, Serbia’s current president and former Minister of Propaganda in Slobodan Milošević’s regime.

This story returned to the spotlight after several respected regional and international media outlets published new details related to the current investigations into Vučić’s involvement in this inhumane scheme. According the British newspaper The Telegraph, new findings by investigative journalists in the region and material submitted to Italian judicial authorities mention Vučić as attending one of these safaris during the siege of Sarajevo between 1992 and 1996. Croatian journalist Domagoj Margetić also raised the alarm, claiming that he has evidence of Vučić’s involvement and that he has handed it over to the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Milan, requesting an international investigation. This story ties into the 2022 Slovenian documentary Sarajevo Safari, which presented “murder tourism” as a practice organized by Bosnian Serb paramilitary forces, supported by Serbian security structures at the time.

The involvement of Vučić, a figure who has dominated Serbian politics for nearly two decades, in this dark history reopens the question that the region has been mulling over for 30 years: Has Serbia truly broken away from its criminal past, or has it simply produced a refined version of Milošević’s political project? In many ways, the answer has become clearer than ever. Today’s Serbia is a modernized version of Milošević’s Serbia, built on the same principles of crime and victimization, simply presented in Aleksandar Vučić’s technocratic style.

What was once considered part of the murky file of Milosevic’s Minister of Information is now directly connected to reports suggesting Vučić’s personal involvement in the “Sniper Tourism” scheme during the siege of Sarajevo. What makes this story even more troubling is that, unlike countries with similar criminal pasts, Serbia never went through any moral or institutional denazification. Serbia has not acknowledged its crimes, condemned genocide, nor distanced itself from the structures that organized and carried out massacres in Kosova, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Croatia. Instead, it has recycled the old narrative and dressed it in the modern packaging of governance: diplomatic suits, technical rhetoric, carefully crafted social-media campaigns, and claims of “regional stability.” Therefore, many analysts describe today’s Serbia as that of Milošević, a version of the 1990s, but redesigned and with new means to achieve the same goals.

For three decades, Serbia’s tendency to turn crime into heroism and victimhood into guilt has been relentless. The state and its political elites have treated war criminals as national icons, invested heavily in denying the Srebrenica genocide, manipulated historical facts, and, through controlled media, spread a narrative in which Serbia is the victim, not the aggressor. In this reality, new accusations implicating the current president in the Sarajevo safaris are not surprising: they are simply another link in a long chain showing the unchanged nature of a political structure that was never dismantled.

Investigations into the Sarajevo hunt place Vučić within the upper echelons of Serbian power structures during this period. If the evidences submitted in Milan are convincing, it could open a new chapter in the pursuit of international justice, moreover, it could reveal a truth that has long been known in the region: the apparatus that organized the snipers never disappeared; it merely changed form. Instead of snipers targeting children, women, and civilians in Sarajevo, today Serbia operates state-funded illegal structures, political parties serving as proxies, criminal groups operating as arms of the government, and coordinated disinformation campaigns against Kosova, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, and the European Union.

Vucic’s war machine is modeled on Milosevic’s regime, a structure in which the state, intelligence services, the media, criminal groups, and political proxies operate as a single command. The only difference is the technology. While this machine used snipers and paramilitaries in the 1990s, today it uses hybrid operations, cyberattacks, criminal networks, and sophisticated propaganda campaigns aimed at subverting neighboring countries and Western institutions. The crime is the same, however the tools have been upgraded.

This development should raise serious alarm in the region. Serbia has not reformed, neither morally nor politically. They have not apologized, condemned the perpetrators, nor dismantled the structures that led to the war. For 30 years, the same narrative of denial, falsification, and victimhood has been used to perpetuate a hegemonic project that has never abandoned its ambition for political and geopolitical control in the Balkans. The substance hasn’t changed in three decades, only the methods have. From organizing snipers to conducting hybrid operations and supporting illegal structures in the north of Kosova, Serbia has maintained the same strategy of using violence as a political tool.

Above all, the story of the Sarajevo safaris should serve as a vivid reminder that neither Kosova nor the Western Balkans can be safe as long as the West continues to treat Serbia as a constructive ally. In practice, Serbia functions as a continuation of Milošević’s system, simply redesigned for the era of hybrid warfare. Rather than freeing itself from its criminal legacy as other European states did after totalitarian periods, Serbia has chosen to reshape and adapt its politics of violence.

Despite the delay, the investigations into the “Sarajevo Hunt” reveal more than just a story from the past. They bring attention to the ongoing reality of a structure that was never dismantled and continues to operate with the same political agenda. The effort to present Vučić as a reformer, stabilizer, or Western partner clashes with the reality Serbia has produced over the past three decades. The threat isn’t new, it’s the same one. It has been there for 30 years. Only the form has changed.

The Balkans will not find peace until Serbia confronts its past and undergoes the transformation required of any state with such a criminal record. Until then, every new piece of evidence, including allegations of “Sniper Safaris”, is not just a story from the past, but a warning about what lies ahead. /The Balkan Report/