Jared Kushner will build a luxury hotel in place of the demolished headquarters
The General Staff Building in central Belgrade was bombed by NATO forces in 1999 as part of the alliance's campaign to end hostilities in Kosovo. Since then, it has been practically not rebuilt and serves as a monument to the historical events in Yugoslavia. The opposition and architectural experts have repeatedly opposed the demolition of the building and the construction of a hotel complex on this site. We talk about attempts to protect this cultural heritage site, which seem to have turned out to be in vain.
On Friday, November 7, members of the Serbian parliament loyal to the president Alexander Vucic led to urgent admission lex specialis, a special act that will allow the American investment company Affinity Partners Development to avoid standard procedures and obtain the necessary permits for the construction of a new business and hotel complex. Affinity Partners Development is owned by Jared Kushner, husband Ivanka Trumpdaughter of US President Donald Trump. The estimated value of the project is USD 500 million. According to The New York Times, the complex will consist of a luxury hotel, 1,500 apartments and a museum.
The Serbian authorities already in 2013 were considering getting rid of the ruined building. In January 2013, during his visit to the Balkan Peninsula, the Sheikh of the United Arab Emirates Muhammad bin Zayed Al Nahyan expressed his desire to build a hotel on the site of the General Staff complex. In November of the same year it turned out to be a developer Donald Trump discussed the investment with the head of the Serbian government Ivica Dacicwho was considered the president's main ally in the 1990s Slobodan Milosevicwhich is in conflict with NATO.
In 2013, Aleksander Vucić was first deputy prime minister and took part in attempts to resolve the issue of the fate of the General Staff building. – I don't think these ruins are very beautiful. We will appeal to the public with a proposal. We will inform who wants to invest how much and how much money our country will receive from it. And if you tell us that there is not enough money, that the ruins are beautiful, that we are destroying something very important, everything will remain as you say, Vučić said then.
Jared Kushner with his wife Ivanka TrumpWikimedia Commons
Discussions on Kushner's company's project began in 2024 in May last year. Serbian authorities rented the building to Affinity Partners Development for 99 years. Last November Parliament deprived the complex of the status of a protected cultural heritage site. This decision was criticized by opposition representatives and architecture experts. One of the opposition leaders, former Chief of the General Staff of Serbia Zdravko Ponos he accused Alexander Vucic of wanting to secure Trump's support in this way. Vucic himself said he was “inspired by Jared Kushner's project and would be happy to promote it.”
The Committee for the Protection of Cultural Monuments, the Serbian equivalent of the Polish conservator of monuments, also opposed the construction. The Committee emphasized that, according to the Cultural Heritage Act, withdrawal of status is possible only with the consent of the Committee, which it did not grant.
The General Staff Complex, consisting of two buildings A and B, obtained the status of a protected facility in 2005, 50 years after construction began and 40 years after it was put into use. It was designed by a Serbian architect Nikola Dobrović for the needs of the Ministry of Defense. The building was built in the style of post-war modernism and has a stepped structure, which, according to Dobrovic's idea, was to resemble the canyon of the Sutjeska River, where in 1943 the partisan army fought one of the most important battles against the Germans during World War II.
On the night of April 29-30, 1999, a month after the start of the NATO military operation, Allied aircraft bombed several key government facilities in Belgrade, including the General Staff Complex. According to Human Rights Watch, at least three people were killed that night and dozens were seriously injured. There was no one in the general staff building itself during the raid.
On the 26th anniversary of the start of the bombings, on March 24, 2025, Serbian students submitted a request to the Constitutional Court to declare the government's decision to abolish the status of a cultural heritage site illegal. During the rally, they read a letter from Col. Zoltan Dani, who together with his colleagues shot down the American F-117 plane in 1999 (it was a serious, but only success of the Yugoslav air defense). Dani wrote that “monsters from the West are trying to reach the scene of their crime.” A representative of the “We will protect the General Staff” initiative stated at the same rally that “giving the aggressor a memory complex is an insult to the victims, the highest cynicism and mockery of the Serbian nation.”
Alexander Vucic himself, together with the leader of the Bosnian Serbs, Milorad Dodik, appeared on the same day at another rally – at a military airport in the suburbs of Belgrade. – They [NATO] they killed your children. You will not forget this, you must not. But you have to forgive, Vucic said there.
After the authorities stripped the General Staff Building of its cultural heritage status, the Serbian Prosecutor's Office for Organized Crime launched an investigation into the legality of the decision. As a result, several officials were accused of fraud and forgery of documents. In response, President Vučić assured that the transaction was concluded in accordance with the law and informed that in 2016 he had agreed with the Americans to transform the General Staff building into a “museum of NATO victims.” According to him, the purpose of the prosecutor's investigation is to prevent Serbia from “establishing relations with the Trump administration.” The president said all this in a television program on November 3, after which the prosecutor's office accused him of abusing his powers and trying to put pressure on independent investigators.
In June 2025, a conference of the pan-European organization for the protection of cultural heritage, Europa Nostra, was held in Belgrade, during which the General Staff building was included on the list of particularly endangered objects of European cultural heritage.
