BELGRADE — Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić is in a tight spot — but will he be able to wriggle free?
The most visible and wide-reaching protest movement in modern Serbian history escalated on Saturday when at least 100,000 people flooded Belgrade from across the country to demand the government take corruption more seriously.
The protests began over four months ago after the awning of the main train station in Novi Sad, Serbia’s northern regional capital, collapsed and killed 14 people on the spot.
Another victim later succumbed to their injuries, bringing the death toll to 15 — a number now deeply tied to the protests, which are marked by 15-minute vigils and silent tributes, and see the biggest demonstrations happening on the 15th day of each month.
The Serbian Progressive Party-led government and parliament have tried a mix of downplaying the protests and making concessions, but neither has slowed their momentum, as even many loyal government supporters start to lean toward the movement.
We answer your questions here on the protests rocking Serbia.
Wait a second. Aren’t people in Serbia always protesting?
Yes, to some extent, but these protests are different (no really, they are; we’ll get to this).
Serbia has been led by some of the most controversial and destructive leaders in Balkan history — think Slobodan Milošević, for one, president during the 1990s and known to older generations who remember the bloody Yugoslav disintegration as the “Butcher of the Balkans.”
He was unseated by a series of protests known as the Oct. 6 Revolution.
As such, demonstrations led by progressive-minded, pro-Western movements or just those trying to unseat leaders who have become too comfortable with their power are relatively common. POLITICO has covered the major ones, and the last protest movement erupted just a year before this one due to claims of election fraud.
OK. So why are the new protests different?
The collapse of the canopy in Novi Sad shocked people because of the sheer arbitrariness of the victims — commuters who simply happened to be taking the train or bus from the city’s main station during peak hours.
The tragedy was further amplified by Novi Sad’s strategic location near regional capitals like Budapest, Zagreb and Vienna, making it a hub for travelers from across the region.
Anyone could have been there that day.
That’s why so many people were compelled to come to Belgrade last Saturday. While the Ministry of Interior claims there were 107,000 people and other sources say the number could reach 300,000 — getting a precise headcount is difficult because people filled Belgrade’s main boulevards, side streets and spaces between major institutions and apartment buildings. The old “heads per square kilometer method” is therefore unreliable.
But anyone who was there could tell you that people were packed shoulder-to-shoulder for at least three hours, making movement through the main two-kilometer stretch of central Belgrade nearly impossible. The crowd held placards and sang protest songs, while some creative students made papier-mâché effigies of politicians with their mouths stuffed with cash.
Did I hear something about a sonic cannon?
Around 7 p.m. on Saturday, during another 15-minute silent tribute to the victims, a sudden eardrum-splitting, whooshing noise ripped through the crowd on Kralja Milana Street.
The crowd dispersed on all sides, with many people falling over and being injured. Local outlets speculate it was a sonic cannon, a controversial crowd-control device also known as a Long-Range Acoustic Device or LRAD, that emits high-frequency sound waves capable of causing pain, disorientation and long-term hearing damage.
In the immediate post-mortem, Vučić denied the use of an LRAD against protesters and said it was an anti-drone rifle or an electronic weapon that disables drones by jamming their GPS and radio signals, forcing them to land or lose control.
An urgent investigation is underway.
Where’s the alleged corruption?
All right, settle in for this one.
Most of post-communist Europe inherited the buildings — train or bus stations, stadiums, concert halls and massive apartment blocks — constructed in the 20th century push to prioritize public infrastructure for the many, not the few.
After the fall of communism, a lot of these buildings were either not properly maintained or have largely been left in disrepair. The Novi Sad train station was built in 1964 and in dire need of a facelift. It was being upgraded starting in 2021 and retrofitted as part of China’s Belt and Road initiative, intending to modernize the Belgrade-Novi Sad-Budapest line and to integrate it into China’s broader vision of an uninterrupted Budapest-Belgrade-Skopje-Athens corridor, ultimately linking to the Chinese-operated port of Piraeus in Athens.
Vučić has boasted about how Belt and Road investments have significantly sped up travel times both on rail and on the A1 highway linking the south and the north of the country, laying personal claim to the project. Given the deep-seated suspicion toward governments in the Balkans, many believe corruption, poorly drawn up contracts or a lack of expert oversight in the station’s modernization played a role in the collapse.
And why are university students boycotting classes?
The initial protests were organized by residents of Novi Sad, of all ages, who gathered in the center of the city to honor the victims of the tragedy.
As pro-government outlets and pundits started criticizing them, more people began to protest — including the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade that gathered in the vicinity of their university building on Nov. 22.
Professors and students were attacked during the protest by what they claim was an organized group unaffiliated with the movement, triggering outrage and prompting students to “occupy” their universities in defiance. One by one, more universities and faculties across the country joined in, suspending classes and deepening their commitment to the cause.
Students’ ability to protest almost daily — unlike many citizens who might be equally outraged but can’t step away from jobs or family responsibilities — has helped sustain the movement. Those not on the front lines every day contribute in other ways, such as by cooking meals, buying blankets and supplies, and delivering them to the occupied universities.
Students, younger and fitter than the older generations, have also been able to march by the thousands from city to city, walking tens of kilometers and reaching even the most remote regions of the country to spread news of the movement.
This has been a crucial factor in the protests’ growth, allowing them to bypass the government-controlled narrative pushed by national TV channels — all pro-government networks initially ignored the protests — as well as virulently pro-Vučić tabloids and dailies.
So Vučić, then. Could this bring him down?
It’s still a long shot.
So far, the president has tried to stave off the pressure by having three ministers, the mayor of Novi Sad and even Prime Minister Miloš Vučević resign, and by publishing the documents relating to the construction plans for the train station — with limited success.
People are not impressed by Vučić forcing his closest allies to resign. If anything, the president has shown that people around him and even his closest collaborators are disposable, as long as he stays the man on top.
Publishing the heavily redacted documents — while formally acquiescing to one of the protesters’ demands — has not convinced people that similar oversights won’t happen again.
Why does Vučić say a ‘color revolution’ is underway?
Viktor Orbán, Vladimir Putin, Robert Fico and other undemocratically inclined leaders all share a talking point — namely that people can’t possibly become organically inspired to protest against their government. Citizens must have received funding or boosting of some sort from shadowy foreign forces in order to rise up.
The “color revolution” term was popularized by Putin, in particular, following the 2004 protests in Kyiv to prevent a Kremlin-backed candidate from seizing power, with Ukrainian protesters adopting the color orange as a symbol of their support for the opposition candidate. The term, in autocrat-parlance, means a widespread Western-backed movement for regime change.
Since then, bogeyman figures such as geriatric billionaire George Soros and even Brussels institutions have been blamed for popular uprisings.
Vučić himself said in an Instragam video post Monday that he won’t allow a “copy of Maidan in Serbia” to pass, referring to the pro-Western protests launched in Kyiv in 2013 that were followed by the first Russian invasion of Ukraine.
He has continually claimed — most recently during an interview with Donald Trump Jr. conducted in Belgrade last week — that international foundations and even foreign governments are financing the protests, ostensibly hoping to discourage people from participating in them. So far, this approach seems to have gained little traction — as the demos grow.
Does the EU have any thoughts?
At the European Commission’s press briefing on Monday, the EU executive said there was a meeting planned between President Ursula von der Leyen and Vučić — during which the subject is likely to come up.
The protesters aren’t holding their breath for the EU to voice any support for the movement. Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos has largely focused the sparse statements she’s made over the past months on condemning violence against protesters.
In fact, EU flags have all but disappeared from the protests. Unlike Hungary, Georgia and Slovakia, people in Serbia view leader Vučić as Brussels’ man in Belgrade who will pay lip service to EU values when he’s in Brussels or when figures such as von der Leyen visit the country, as long as they don’t criticize him too harshly.
The EU’s support for a controversial lithium mine in Serbia — a deeply unpopular move — as a means to provide the bloc with a steady supply of the mineral needed to compete with China’s production of electric vehicles has all but cemented the view that Brussels is the enemy, and that EU flags do not belong on the streets.
Did I hear that Novak Djoković got involved?
Yes!
The tennis legend — Serbia’s most recognizable athlete, alongside NBA superstar Nikola Jokić — voiced his support for the protests several times in recent months. In a post over the weekend, Djoković shared an aerial photograph of packed central Belgrade with the caption “History! Glorious” and wore a hoodie with the inscription “Students are Champions” during a basketball championship in January.
The nod means a lot to people in the country who look up to perhaps the most famous Serb in the world, especially considering he has largely shied away from political statements relating to Serbia and enjoys the occasional photo-op with Vučić.
Djoković’s move is indicative of a softening of support even among the president’s staunchest backers. Vučić recently criticized public broadcaster RTS, which is usually firmly in his corner, of “applying more pressure on the prosecution than the opposition.”
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