Tatyana Kekic

Serbia has been gripped by months of student protests in response to a tragic accident at Novi Sad railway station in November 2024, when the collapse of a concrete canopy roof claimed 15 lives. The protests have come to resemble a sort of May ’68 moment. Not in the sense that they are occurring in the same global context of cultural change, social liberation and anti-war activism. The demands of the protesters today are much narrower. But the students’ inventive tactics, grassroots organising, daily blockades and sit-ins at universities invite such comparisons.

Thousands of Serbs gathered outside the Palace of Serbia today to welcome the Chinese president Xi Jinping, chanting ‘China, Serbia’. Addressing the audience, Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vučić thanked Xi for choosing to visit Serbia: ‘We are writing history today...[Xi] hasn’t come to Europe in five years and he has again chosen our little Serbia.’ The visit has been choreographed to coincide with the 25th anniversary of Nato’s bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999. The strike killed three Chinese journalists and sparked mass protests across China. It is an incident China will never forget and has been a constant thorn in Sino-American relations.

Today, Russians in Serbia are heading to the polls to cast their vote and protest against what many see as a sham presidential election. A polling station in the capital Belgrade opened this morning at 8am, but many decided to turn up at ‘Noon against Putin’, a protest called by the late Russian opposition politician Alexey Navalny.  Tens of thousands of Russians have settled in Serbia since the start of the war in Ukraine. Like millions of other Russian exiles around the world, they are eligible to vote in this weekend’s polls—which are almost certain to hand Vladimir Putin another six years in power. With no credible opponent and only one possible result, I asked Russians why they are bothering to show up at the polls.

It must be strange to be Russian and living in Serbia these days. On the one hand, Serbs are very welcoming. The country’s historic ties with Russia and their shared Orthodox faith means that most Serbs have been happy to see tens of thousands of Russians settling in their country since the start of the Ukraine war. On the other hand, if you are Russian in Serbia, you might find you are only welcome for as long as you keep your mouth shut. Once seen as a safe-haven for Russians, Serbia is cracking down on those who dare to speak out against Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Serbia’s president, Aleksandar Vučić, has followed in Vladimir Putin’s footsteps this week by blaming popular protests on western meddling to discredit the opposition.   Protests over alleged vote rigging erupted in Belgrade after Serbia’s national and municipal elections on December 17. Vučić and his Serbian Progressive party (SNS) won an emphatic victory in the national poll, with 48 per cent of the vote to the opposition’s 24 per cent. But the results were closer in the Belgrade elections, where the SNS won only a few percentage points more than the opposition coalition, Serbia Against Violence (SPN).