Serbia let Putin’s spies zap dogs with ‘sound cannons’

Documents show Belgrade brought in Russia’s FSB to conduct experiments on animals.

By UNA HAJDARI
in Belgrade, Serbia

^{Illustration by Natália Delgado/ POLITICO}

Serbian intelligence officers tested sound cannons on dogs in collaboration with Russia’s notorious security service, according to government documents seen by POLITICO.

The Serbian documents confirm that President Aleksandar Vučić’s administration carried out experiments with high-powered loudspeakers colloquially known as sound cannons, two weeks after an anti-government demonstration in Belgrade was disrupted by what protesters described as a crippling sonic blast.

The joint testing of sonic weapons on animals highlights the depth of security cooperation between Russia — the EU’s most belligerent adversary — and Serbia, a stalled EU candidate whose government is facing a serious challenge.

The Long-Range Acoustic Devices (LRAD) devices are marketed for long-distance communication, but when used at close range, they can risk hearing damage. They have also been reported to cause headaches, dizziness and nausea. The government has denied deploying sound cannons on demonstrators.

Serbia is in the grip of its largest protest movement in decades. For more than a year, tens of thousands of people — occasionally hundreds of thousands of citizens — have poured into the streets across the country, staging regular nationwide rallies that reflect deepening anger at the government.

On March 15, 2025, during one of the biggest demonstrations, a sudden, ear-splitting noise ripped down Belgrade’s main boulevard, prompting a wave of people to duck for cover.

Videos filmed from multiple angles show the disturbance rippling through the tightly packed crowd before people bolted in panic. Demonstrators arriving at Belgrade emergency rooms reported nausea, vomiting, headaches and dizziness. They reported hearing a sound like “a group of motorcyclists” or a “locomotive” headed in their direction.

After initially dismissing allegations that authorities had deployed a sound cannon, Vučić said “a complete investigation will be conducted within 48 hours, and then all those responsible for such brutal fabrications and lies will be held accountable to the authorities.”

Interior Minister Ivica Dačić also denied any wrongdoing, insisting Serbia “did not use any illegal means, including a so-called sound cannon.”

A month after the protest, Serbia’s intelligence agency, the BIA, published a report that they had commissioned from Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) asserting that the high-decibel devices were “not used during the protests,” and concluding there had been no mass “psychological, moral and physical impact on people.”

The Serbian Ministry of Interior did not reply to a request for comment.

Animal testing

The animal tests were conducted as part of the post-protest inquiry, according to the documents seen by POLITICO, which were produced by the BIA and a government ministry.

The intention was to assess whether the symptoms described by protesters were consistent with the effects of sound cannons, which Serbian officials had previously acknowledged the police possess.

About two weeks after the protest, Serbian and Russian intelligence specialists gathered a group of dogs at a BIA testing site to evaluate the “effect of the emitters on biological objects.” Dogs were chosen as the test subjects because of “their high sensitivity to acoustic effects.”

The animals were blasted with two LRAD models — LRAD 100X MAG-HS and LRAD 450XL — made by the California-based company Genasys, at “ranges of 200, 150, 100, 50 and 25 meters,” according to the documents.

Datasheets for the models deployed indicate they can emit sounds at up to 150 decibels, the equivalent of a jet engine at takeoff.

The documents also suggest the tests may have been carried out without the approvals required for animal experiments.

“The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Water Management… does not have information on whether tests of the effects of the LRAD 100H and LRAD 450XL, as well as other tests of the effects of other devices on dogs, have been conducted,” the documents state.

“This Ministry has never received a request for approval to conduct tests on animals, and therefore no decision has been issued approving the test in question, as well as other similar tests,” they continued.

Danilo Ćurčić, a Serbian human rights lawyer, said the dogs were “subjected to either experiments or abuse,” as defined under Serbia’s Animal Welfare Act.

He said Serbian law requires animal experiments to be registered in advance and cleared through the competent bodies — including review by an ethics commission — and it explicitly bars animal testing for the “testing of weapons and military equipment.”

Radomir Lazović, an opposition politician, described the tests as “part of a campaign by Aleksandar Vučić to cover up the use of sound cannons against his own people at the protests in March.”

“Thousands of people felt the massive effects of this sonic weapon on their skins last year,” he said.  

In their report about the canine experiments, the FSB insisted: “When transmitting the basic and test signals, biological objects (dogs) did not feel discomfort (changes in behavior) at the distance under investigation. The dogs were checked 3 days after the tests and did not show any changes in their condition.”