To Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, Milan Radoicic was the number one man protecting the Serb people in Kosovo for years but there were times when he denied knowing the former Serb List deputy leader.
The spotlight is on Radoicic now following the armed incident at the Banjska monastery on September 24. Vucic is not denying that he knows him but is saying that the relevant authorities will investigate Radoicic’s role in the events in northern Kosovo.
Vucic first mentioned him in 2017: “I thank them for saving Serbia in Kosovo and Metohija because that is what they are doing. They and their children,” Vucic said in September 2017 and mentioned Radoicic by name along with several others.
In October that year, Radoicic and the leaders of the Belgrade-backed Serb List toasted their election victory with the head of the Serbian government’s Office for Kosovo. Radoicic was not a party official at that time.
The following year, Vucic denied knowing Radoicic. “I never spoke to him. He might have been at a meeting that I attended but never by telephone, never one-on-one not so that I knew who I was talking to,” the Serbian President said in February 2018. Radoicic was named a deputy leader of the Serb List just a few months later, in June 2018. Later that year, Vucic said that he was not an academic, painter, writer or intellectual. “Unlike many great Serbs, Milan Radoicic was always in the first line of defense in northern Mitrovica and that was not just once along,” the Serbian President said late in 2018.
Speaking in November 2018, Vucic said that Radoicic “was the number one man defending northern Mitrovica until this campaign killed him” in terms of “protecting our people” and “in terms of the people who offered resistance to the Albanians”.
Radoicic spoke directly to the president several years later at a meeting in Raska, a town near the border of Kosovo, where Vucic met with Kosovo Serbs several times. “Mr President, you heard what these brave lads had to say. I will tell you one thing on behalf of all of them – we will defend to the death next time and you know very well that I don’t lie,” he said in October 2021.
Vucic said several times that Radoicic did not lie when he took a polygraph test with questions about the killing of Kosovo Serb opposition leader Oliver Ivanovic. “He failed on other things … but he passed the polygraph on Oliver Ivanovic,” the president said without ever specifying what questions he was caught out on.
Last week, Vucic spoke to Sky News and did not deny that Radoicic is an ally but that he can’t say that he is a friend. The president also denied that they were allies during the Banjska armed incident.
(N1, 08.10.2023)
https://n1info.rs/vesti/odnos-vucica-i-radoicica-od-nikada-nismo-razgovarali-do-bliskog-saveznika/