Obituary
Bratislav Braca Grubačić
(1952 – 2024)
“The well-known Belgrade journalist, editor, and publisher, Bratislav Braca Grubačić (72), passed away on Saturday, 21 December, in Brussels,” read the brief agency report that spread through Belgrade’s media circles in late December, confirmed on Wednesday evening by his close associates from his time in Serbia.
Grubačić graduated from the Faculty of Law in Belgrade and later served as Vice President of the University Committee of the League of Socialist Youth of Belgrade. He was also a secretary in the Yugoslav League for Peace, Equality, and Independence of Nations and, from 1981, the director of the Belgrade Youth Centre and chairman of the Programme Council of the Student Cultural Centre. He also worked as director of the publishing house Mladost and as an editor at Tanjug’s International Press Centre. During the wars in the former Yugoslavia, he was a “fixer” for major foreign TV companies.
From 1989, he worked as deputy director of Marketing Slobodna Zona Beograd. In 1992, he founded and directed the consultancy firm V.I.P. d.o.o., which published the VIP News bulletin in English—a highly influential and respected source of information for foreigners in Belgrade, particularly the diplomatic corps, for over 20 years. What they couldn’t read in the bulletin, foreigners could hear from Braca in conversations at diplomatic receptions or dinners. Always with a glass of whiskey in hand and an enigmatic smile, Grubačić was the “most sought-after interlocutor” for many foreigners at such events. Braca—a mix of journalist, intelligence operative, and charmer—always reminded me of the character Guy Hamilton, played by Mel Gibson in The Year of Living Dangerously.
He was married to Dutch ambassador Stella Ronner, with whom he had a son, Luka, and a daughter, Jelena, from his first marriage. Braca’s wedding to Stella at Kalemegdan looked like something out of a film—a mix of foreigners, politicians, and intelligence officers.
Since the founding of the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) in 2008, he has been a member, later serving on its Main Board, as chairman of the Supervisory Board of Serbia and Montenegro Air Traffic Services (SMATSA), and as a member of the Programme Board of Radio-Television Serbia (RTS).
We spoke in the garden of the British Ambassador’s Residence in June 2012, at the reception for Queen Elizabeth II’s Birthday, when Braca received a call from Aleksandar Vučić, asking him to step outside and escort him and Tomislav Nikolić, then the SNS leader, into the reception. It was the first time former radicals had attended a British monarch’s birthday celebration, and neither of them had been seen on the lawn at Miloša Savčića 1 for such an occasion until last year, when Aleksandar Vučić, for the first time since coming to power, attended the birthday of the now King Charles III.
A few years later, I ran into him at the Brijuni Hotel Neptun, in the company of another “SNS dissident.” He told me he had left the party, dissatisfied with its departure from its core principles. He had since become a sharp critic of the government, particularly its then-president Aleksandar Vučić.
Grubačić was in a relationship with Duga journalist Dada Vujasinović in April 1994 when she was found dead in her apartment. That morning, my colleague Goca Jovanović and I met her at Duga‘s offices—she was smiling, telling us about her relationship with Braca, and showed no signs of someone who would take her own life just hours later.
The last time we met was at Kopaonik the previous winter when he told me that, for health reasons, he no longer wanted to run the VIP News bulletin, which he had intended to sell.
He will be remembered as one of the most colourful, intriguing, and enigmatic figures in Belgrade’s media and public scene over the past 40 years.
He was laid to rest on the last day of 2024 at the New Cemetery in Belgrade.
By Robert Čoban