YouTubers entered the Batajnica military airfield: “The army was humiliated, an investigation is needed”

Two young men, dressed in shorts and T-shirts, entered the “Colonel-Pilot Milenko Pavlović” military airfield in Batajnica without any hindrance and filmed everything, as the Serbian daily Danas reports. They published the video on the “Roofless TV” channel on YouTube, where within a few days it gathered more than half a million views.

According to Danas’s description, the footage shows how they enter the fenced area, find aircraft that apparently are no longer used and get inside some of them, while also filming the landing of a plane. From the police and the army, there has so far been no answer to journalists’ question of what happened and whether they had permission to film.

Novica Antić, former president of the Military Union of Serbia, told Danas that the case clearly shows the state of the army. According to him, this is a consequence of the mass departure of people from the army — in the last decade, 15,000 professionals have left the Serbian Army. “Today there is nobody to guard the military facilities. The barracks are empty and that is why these humiliations and scandals happen to us”, Antić said, adding that responsibility also falls on the director of the Military Security Agency (VBA), Đuro Jovanić, the Chief of the General Staff Milan Mojsilović and the entire General Staff.

Security expert Adam Kovač said that a doorman would have been enough for such an intrusion. “It is unbelievable that they entered without any camouflage and without needing to hide. Some of the aircraft there date back to the Sub-Regional Arms Control Agreement of the 1990s. The fact that they are keeping silent is a disgrace — as if they do not want to admit that it happened. There must be institutional responsibility. If someone failed in the field, the ministry must open an investigation”, Kovač told Danas.

Petar Bošković, former head of the Public Relations Office in the Serbian Army and an MP of the “Srbija Centar” (SRCE) party, called the case “a great disgrace and a mockery of the army”. According to him, investment comes first in people and their dignity, and then in equipment; he also demanded the establishment of democratic and civilian control over the army, as well as the creation of a military ombudsman to stop mobbing in the army.