Serbia is a Balkan country and a candidate for EU membership. Its president is Aleksandar Vucic. Serbia's national day celebrates not a victory in war, but a glorious defeat at the hands of the Ottoman Turks in 1389—a cultural trait that, according to a 2011 CIA paper on "Cultural Topography", helps explain its willingness to stand up to overwhelming military force. During the 1999 Kosovo war, American military planners estimated it might take three days to break Serbia's will using air power; it took 79 days.
Under Mr Vucic, Serbia has managed to be friendly to Russia while also supplying arms to Ukraine. Mr Vucic's ruling party is a patronage machine that gives supporters jobs in exchange for votes. It controls all the mainstream media. It won a snap election in 2023.
Mr Vucic has held sway over Serbia in various posts since 2012 and was a powerful figure under Slobodan Milosevic, who led Serbia during the Balkan wars in the 1990s and was overthrown in 2000.
Demonstrations erupted when a concrete canopy at the railway station in Novi Sad, Serbia's second city, collapsed in November 2024, killing 16 people. The station had just been refurbished, so corruption was widely suspected. Mr Vucic replaced his prime minister in a bid to appease the protesters, to no avail. Students refused to co-operate with Serbia's established but feeble opposition parties, initially demanding justice and a better-run country, before calling for early elections in March 2025.
On March 15th 2025, during what may have been the biggest demonstration in Serbia's history, panic broke out, apparently stirred up by police using long-range acoustic devices. The students kept universities closed for months; the government stopped paying the bills, paying lecturers only 12.5% of their salary.
Local elections on June 8th 2025 in two small towns where Mr Vucic's party previously won almost 80% of the vote saw it scrape home by a whisker. By February 2026 the protests had continued for 15 months, though with smaller numbers. A large proportion of Serbia's academic, cultural and sports elite came out against Mr Vucic, including Novak Djokovic. Mr Vucic responded by appointing "super-loyalists" to key positions in the security services. Ana Brnabic, the speaker of Serbia's parliament, dismissed the protests as a "colour revolution" instigated by outsiders. Students began discussing forming their own electoral list ahead of ten local elections scheduled for 2026.
Under Mr Vucic, all terrestrial broadcasters are state-controlled or owned by friends of the president. Mr Vucic describes uncomplimentary coverage as "pure terrorism". KRIK, an investigative outlet that often exposes government graft, has been hit with more than 30 lawsuits, of which 17 were current as of early 2026; its editor, Stevan Dojcinovic, spends up to five days a month in court. Official media have accused him of working for the CIA and for George Soros; faked pictures of him with a gang boss and real, intimate photos meant to embarrass him have been circulated. In 2025 there were at least 91 physical attacks on journalists in Serbia, according to the country's Independent Journalists' Association. Assailants are seldom punished. See press freedom.
China and Serbia conduct joint police patrols in Belgrade. China trains Serbian police and has provided surveillance equipment that activists believe is used to target protesters. Despite this, 81% of Serbians view China favourably. China has refrained from commenting on Serbia's domestic unrest—part of a values-free approach to security diplomacy that contrasts with the political conditions attached to Western assistance. The collapse of a Chinese-built railway-station canopy (see below) sparked nearly a year of mass protests, yet popular sentiment towards China has remained warm, in part because it does not claim to stand for any particular political system.
Serbia borrowed about $1.3bn from China for its section of the Budapest-Belgrade railway, China's first railway in the EU. The Serbian stretch between Belgrade and Novi Sad opened in 2022, cutting the fastest journey from about 90 minutes to under 40 minutes; trains along the entire 350km line can reach 200kph on the Serbian side. The collapse of a concrete canopy at the station in Novi Sad—renovated as part of the overhaul—killed 16 people and triggered the 2024 protests. Officials and Chinese firms say the canopy was not part of the refurbishment.
The European Commission has designated a lithium-mining project in Serbia as being of "strategic importance". This had previously been the subject of controversial plans that sparked waves of protest.
EXIT, a big music festival in Novi Sad that helped put Serbia back on the cultural map after the Balkan wars, lost its government funding for supporting the student protesters.
A witty saying proves nothing, but saying something pointless gets people's attention.