Vladimir Vuletić

Vladimir Vuletić was born on 28 November 1978 in Šabac, then part of SR Serbia in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. He attended the Janko Veselinović elementary school and the Šabac Gymnasium. His faculty biography, quoted by Istinomer, records that he won the Republic festival of reciters five times: in Velika Plana in 1989 and in Užice in 1991, 1993, 1995 and 1997. As a member of the gymnasium's drama studio he also won the prize for the best overall acting performance at the 37th Republic competition of amateur theatres of Serbia in Kula in 1995.

He was a Partizan fan from early childhood. In a 2021 interview with Maxbetsport.rs he remembered taking the slow train from Šabac to Belgrade as a boy in the 1990s, six hours in each direction, to watch Partizan, and standing with the club's supporters at a rain-soaked match in 1998.

He enrolled at the University of Belgrade Faculty of Law in 1997 and graduated in June 2001 as the best student of his generation. During his studies he received four annual faculty awards for academic success and prizes for best student from the funds of Beogradska banka, the National Bank of Serbia, the Royal House of Karađorđević and the University of Belgrade. He held scholarships from the Government of the Republic of Serbia and the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Belgrade.

He was also a champion orator: three times winner of the Faculty of Law oratory competition (1998, 2000, 2001), twice winner of the federal competition of law faculties in oratory (Niš 2000, Belgrade 2001) and three times winner of the international Sirmium Lux Verbi oratory competition in Sremska Mitrovica (1998, 2000, 2001).

He began postgraduate studies in legal history in October 2001. In 2003 he attended the Tulane University School of Law summer school in maritime and comparative law on Rhodes, Greece. He defended his master's thesis, on the seller's liability for physical defects in classical Roman law, in November 2006, and his doctoral dissertation, on the protection of the buyer's rights and the contribution of classical Roman law to the development of European private law, in 2010.

Vuletić spent about three decades at the Belgrade Faculty of Law, first as a student and then as a teacher. He was elected assistant-trainee in Roman law in March 2003, assistant in June 2007 (re-elected in 2010) and assistant professor (docent) in March 2011, and he later became an associate professor in the Department of Legal History. Besides Roman law he led exercises in National History of State and Law, General Legal History (Comparative Legal Tradition) and Rhetoric. He was secretary of the Department of Legal History for two terms from 2003 to 2008, a member of Forum Romanum, a club for lovers of Roman law and antiquity, and of the oratory centre Institutio Oratoria.

In January 2014, on the proposal of the Assembly of the Chamber of Commerce of Serbia, the Government of Serbia appointed him deputy president of the Permanent Arbitration Court of internal arbitration at the Chamber.

At Partizan's annual assembly in December 2014 Vuletić was elected president of the club's Supervisory Board. He later said he had been surprised to be called by Vojkan Nedić and Miloš Vazura, a former student of his, while attending a lawyers' congress on Kopaonik. From 2016 until February 2021 he was the club's vice-president, responsible for legal affairs, an unpaid elected post.

He led Partizan's legal team in disciplinary proceedings before UEFA. The best known case came in late 2017, after the Europa League group match against Young Boys, when the club faced heavy sanctions that could have included a stadium closure; the team's written defence persuaded UEFA's disciplinary body to drop the most serious charges, and Vuletić called it the second time the team had emerged triumphant from an almost impossible situation. He was also involved in the long dispute over ownership of the Partizan Stadium in Humska Street, which ended with a ruling of the Appellate Court in Belgrade in January 2019. In early 2021 he stood in for club president Milorad Vučelić during his illness.

He resigned on 9 February 2021, days after the arrest of the Veljko Belivuk group, a criminal gang linked to the club's supporters. In his statement he cited days of tabloid attacks on the club and said he was no longer on the same wavelength as some of his closest colleagues.

After leaving Partizan, Vuletić entered politics. On 1 June 2021, in Leskovac, he announced the movement Crno na belo (Black on White), later styled Crno na belo, Za pravnu i pravednu Srbiju. He said it would fight for a legal and just state, describing it as anti-regime but equally distant from the so-called Serbian opposition, and modelled on the spirit of the 1996 to 1997 protests.

On 14 February 2022, at a press conference at the Media Centre in Belgrade, he announced that he would run for President of Serbia, saying he was ready to stand up to Aleksandar Vučić and would finance everything himself. The citizens' group proposing him was to be called Sistem te laže (The system is lying to you). His candidacy did not make the ballot of the April 2022 election and is listed by Wikipedia among those withdrawn or lacking signatures.

In 2025 and 2026 he remained a frequent guest on television programmes such as B92's Fokus, K1's Perspektive and Insajder, speaking about the student-led protest movement, which he backed, and about Serbian politics.

A trained reciter and amateur actor, Vuletić played a member of the Thule Society in two episodes of the first season of Dragan Bjelogrlić's historical series Balkan Shadows (Senke nad Balkanom), broadcast on RTS1 at the end of 2017.

He was a familiar face on Serbian television for nearly a decade, appearing on N1, Nova S, B92, K1, KTV, Insajder and many smaller channels as a commentator on law, sport and politics. On X he posted as @PartizanusV (Prof. dr Vladimir Vuletić), where he had more than 13,000 followers and mixed Partizan devotion, Serbian history, poetry and sharp political satire. Espreso reported that his final post, a line of verse reading "...that I will stop mid-word, that I will never look back...", drew wide reaction after his death.

Vuletić lived in a duplex apartment on Vladana Desnice Street in the Voždovac district of Belgrade, which neighbours told Kurir included a rooftop terrace he had fitted out himself and a sauna. Neighbours described him as an eloquent man whose voice could often be heard through the windows. He described himself as a lifelong Partizan supporter who said he watched "Partizan, not football". Details of his family life were not made public in the reports reviewed for this profile.

Vuletić's public message was the rule of law. He argued that Serbia lacked a legal state and equality before the law, that its institutions had been captured, and that crime in sport was a reflection of the state of the country. His movement's motto, borrowed from the 1996 protests, played on the Serbian word pravo, meaning both law and straight ahead: not right, not left, but straight ahead; not lawlessness, but law. He was a strong critic of President Aleksandar Vučić, of interior minister Aleksandar Vulin and, after 2021, of Partizan president Milorad Vučelić, and in 2025 he publicly supported the student protest movement. He also posted often about Serbian history, including the First World War.

After the February 2021 arrest of the Veljko Belivuk group, pro-government tabloids and officials, including interior minister Aleksandar Vulin, suggested that Vuletić's resignation from Partizan days later showed links to the group. Srpski telegraf published a transcript of a phone call between him and Belivuk. Vuletić said he had spoken with Belivuk only once, solely about Partizan, and that Belivuk had never come to the Faculty of Law. He said he would offer himself to the organised crime prosecutor to be questioned and, in March 2021, was interviewed as a citizen by the police service for combating organised crime (SBPOK); he said officers told him the summons had nothing to do with him. He announced complaints against President Vučić and minister Vulin, and he publicly rejected what he called a five-month campaign of smears. In March 2021 a group of students sent a letter to the faculty's ethics committee about the authorship of a scientific paper; the committee dismissed it on formal grounds because it was unsigned.

Vuletić is remembered as an unusually theatrical teacher of Roman law, a prize-winning orator, the lawyer who defended Partizan before UEFA, and one of the most combative independent critics of the Serbian government in the early 2020s. The Faculty of Law said he had been part of the institution for the last three decades and would be remembered for his uncompromising desire for knowledge, which he passed on to generations of students. FK Partizan published an in memoriam and offered condolences to his family and friends.

Five-time winner of the Republic festival of reciters (1989, 1991, 1993, 1995, 1997). First prize for best overall acting performance, 37th Republic competition of amateur theatres of Serbia, Kula (1995). Best student of his generation, University of Belgrade Faculty of Law (2001). Four annual Faculty of Law awards and best-student prizes from Beogradska banka, the National Bank of Serbia, the Royal House of Karađorđević and the University of Belgrade. Scholarships of the Government of Serbia and the Royal Norwegian Embassy. Three-time winner of the Faculty of Law oratory competition, two-time winner of the federal law faculties' oratory competition and three-time winner of the Sirmium Lux Verbi international oratory competition.

Vuletić was found dead in the sauna of his apartment in Voždovac, Belgrade, after a group of young men, described as students and friends, went to his home because he had not answered his phone for days. Reports dated 13 October 2026 by RTS, Tanjug, Nova.rs and Kurir described the discovery; b92 and Wikipedia placed it on 12 October. Neighbours told Kurir they had last heard him on the Sunday morning. Emergency doctors could only confirm death. The Higher Public Prosecutor's Office in Belgrade carried out an on-site investigation and ordered an autopsy with toxicology to determine the exact cause of death, which had not been made public. He was 47. The Faculty of Law and FK Partizan published tributes on 13 and 14 October 2026.