Two Kosovo Serbs Plead Guilty to Participating in 2022 Unrest

Dusan Dobrac (R) and Milos Radosavlevic (L) at the Pristina Basic Court on August 31, 2026. Photo: BIRN. Dusan Dobrac and Milos Radosavlevic were given prison sentences of one year and nine months respectively at Pristina Basic Court on Monday after pleading guilty to violating the constitutional order by participating in setting up roadblocks in the north of Kosovo in December 2022. Dobrac was convicted of activity that breaches the constitutional order and obstruction of an official in the performance of their duties, and Radosavlevic of violating the constitutional order. The indictment charged six Kosovo Serb men – Dusan Maksimovic, Dusan Drobac, Milos Radosavljevic, Nemanja Jolovic, Nenad Orlovic and Srdjan Vucinic – with staging organised, coordinated and violent activity to subvert the constitutional order by blocking public roads to two border crossings with Serbia: Jarinje and Bernjak. While Dobrac and Radosavlevic have been sentenced, the trial of Maksimovic, Jolovic, and Vucinic will continue, as they have not pleaded guilty. The sixth defendant, Orlovic has not been arrested yet and the judge announced that Kosovo will seek his arrest internationally as he has failed to appear in court for two hearings in a row. The charges relate to unrest in December 2022, when Serbs in northern Kosovo were setting up barricades at the two border crossings with Serbia, parking trucks, ambulances, diggers and other vehicles across access roads in what was cast as a ‘spontaneous’ outpouring of popular anger. It began after the arrest of a Kosovo Serb on suspicion of attacking election facilities. The prosecution file, seen by BIRN, claims the unrest endangered the lives of police and customs officers. Those involved also allegedly participated in creating “a tense security situation through the opening of fortified positions and the presence of uniformed and armed persons”, according to the prosecution. During questioning, Maksimovic, Jolovic, and Vucinic denied any role in organising the barricades, saying they were only part of a protest by local residents. Orlovic refused to answer the prosecutors during questioning. However, the police discovered a Viber group named ‘Barricades December 2022’ on Maksimovic’s phone, suggesting the incidents were organised and coordinated. They acquired the phone in September 2023, after Maksimovic was arrested over his involvement in an armed attack on Kosovo police in the northern village of Banjska, in which one Kosovo Albanian officer was killed and a cache of military-grade weaponry was seized. He was sentenced in the first instance to 30 years in prison over the Banjska incident, The contents of his phone helped prosecutors investigating the unrest in Serb-majority municipalities and the setting up of the barricades of December 2022. The messages it contained included “Today we’ll all receive ammunition” and “In the afternoon we could try the weapons in Suvi Dol [local village] with two or three bullets each.” Prosecutors stated that the phone evidence undermined claims that local Serbs had spontaneously set up the barricades and sparked the unrest.