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Serbian’s opposition has vowed to keep up the protests aimed at overturning the results of this month’s election they said had been stolen by the ruling party of President Aleksandar Vučić.
Police in Serbia have in recent days arrested at least 38 people, including those detained when a large protest near Belgrade city hall on Christmas Day turned violent. Further demonstrations are planned for Tuesday and the rest of the week, and several opposition MPs have also staged a hunger strike after locking themselves inside the electoral commission building.
Elections this month for the Serbian parliament and several municipalities, including in the capital, ended with a resounding victory for Vučić’s Progressive Party (SNS).
The opposition and international monitors said the vote was “stolen” by the ruling party, and have issued warnings about government violence and Russian influence over the country’s politics.
“We have a major crisis here,” Borko Stefanović, an opposition MP and former deputy speaker of parliament, told the Financial Times. “Protests will continue every day . . . Vučić and his regime are going back to their old radical, violent, pro-Russian ways. This should worry everyone.”
Vučić said the protests were a foreign-backed attempt to overthrow his government. Russian ambassador to Belgrade Aleksandr Botsan-Kharchenko told Russian media after meeting Vučić that the president had “irrefutable evidence” that the west was encouraging the demonstrations. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said there had been “processes and attempts by third forces, including from abroad, to provoke such unrest in Belgrade”.
Opposition activists said the Belgrade protest had been peaceful until hooligans appeared and began throwing rocks and other objects, which prompted riot police to react and begin arresting people. Stefanović said this sequence of events appeared to have been orchestrated.
The opposition has accused the Vučić government of intimidation and election fraud, and said it had bussed in fake voters to artificially boost support for the ruling party. EU flags have been waved at the protests alongside placards referring to the Otpor movement that in 2000 brought down Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic, who died in 2006 while on trial for alleged war crimes
Many demonstrators see parallels between Vučić and Milosevic — Vučić began his political career as propaganda minister under Milosevic during the Balkan wars of the 1990s — and are seeking to invoke the spirit of the movement that removed him to galvanise people in smaller towns outside Belgrade.
“I’m fighting for democracy in this country, that’s our main reason to be here,” said Milos, 28, an advertising professional who joined the Belgrade protest. “My voice was not heard at the election because there was a lot of manipulation and those were not honest elections. We’re all hoping that our presence here can push in the right direction to hold those elections again in a fair climate.”
He added: “I love this country, I love this city, so I’ll keep fighting for democracy until the last breath.”
Outgoing prime minister Ana Brnabić has thanked the Russian secret service for information they gave before election day on the opposition’s plans to protest against an election loss. “This probably won’t be very popular with those from the west but . . . I feel it’s very important to stand up for Serbia and thank the Russian security services that had this information and shared it with us,” Brnabić said on Serbian television.
This recent closeness to the Kremlin is in stark contrast to the preceding months and the apparent westward pivot by Belgrade. The Balkan country is an EU candidate and has pledged to work with the west on key issues such as the status of neighbouring Kosovo.
While most western governments remained silent during the Christmas holidays, an exception was the US, whose ambassador Christopher Hill warned protesters to respect the result of the elections.
“Serbia’s leaders and its citizens should remember: the legitimacy of democratic processes depends upon transparency and on the readiness of all parties, winning or losing, to respect the will of the people as expressed at the ballot box,” Hill wrote on the social media platform X. “Violence and vandalism against state institutions have no place in a democratic society.”
The comments were criticised by pro-western opposition activists, who complained that it appeared Vučić was being backed both from Moscow and Washington.
“This clear support from both sides means Vučić is just trading deals,” said Savo Manojlovic, leader of the Kreni Promeni protest movement. “With Russia it’s about sanctions, and with the west it’s about Kosovo. The sad truth is, in a sensitive geopolitical time every major power prefers a corrupt leader that they can do deals with.”
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