Igor FedykSerbia has been gripped by anti-government protests for over two months, following the tragic incident at Novi Sad’s train station. For now, while public outrage runs high, the country’s fragmented opposition and its inability to leverage street protests into a unified political movement have allowed President Aleksandar Vucic to maintain his grip on power. But things could take a sharp turn if a serious political challenger emerges.
On November 1, a tragedy occurred at the train station in the Serbian city of Novi Sad: during the modernization of the railway station building, its concrete canopy collapsed, killing 15 people. The reaction of Serbian society to this was a wave of anti-government protests. Under public pressure, Minister of Construction, Transport, and Infrastructure Goran Vesic was dismissed, and part of the project documentation of the railway station was made public.
The prosecutor’s office later charged 13 individuals, including Vesiс, in connection with the collapse. However, the society perceived such actions on the part of the authorities simply as eye-catching.
At the end of November, an attack was carried out on students of the Dramatic Arts Department of the Academy of Arts as they paid tribute to the victims of the tragedy in Novi Sad. In response, these students barricaded their faculty, sparking a wave of blockades across universities throughout Serbia. Altogether, students disrupted the operations of 50 faculties across the country’s four largest universities.
The movement quickly gained momentum, with support coming from secondary school students, teachers, and teachers’ unions. Faced with the growing number of blockades, Serbian authorities made the decision to end the academic semester a week earlier than planned.
On December 22, one of the largest protests not only in recent times, but also in the history of Serbia, took place in Belgrade. Organised by students, the event drew a massive crowd. While Serbian police reported an attendance of 29,000, the organisation Archive of Public Assemblies, which specialises in monitoring demonstrations, estimated the turnout to be closer to 100,000.
During the protests, an action called “Half Hour of Noise” took place, during which citizens made noise using whistles and vuvuzelas while chanting slogans such as “Vucic, go away.” Demonstrators carried large banners with messages including “We are all under a canopy,” “You have blood on your hands,” “General strike,” and “Children’s revolution.”
With the beginning of the new year, the call for a “General strike” began to be heard more loudly at protests. On 24 January, cultural institutions, legal professionals, certain schools, and several hundred private businesses responded to the students’ appeal for a 24-hour work stoppage, while street protests continued nationwide.
The protesters are demanding a full investigation into the causes of the Novi Sad tragedy. This includes the publication of all documentation related to the train station’s reconstruction, punishment for those responsible, and prosecution of those involved in the attack on students at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts.
These demands pose a significant challenge to the country’s ruling regime, as a thorough investigation could expose its many “sins,” including nepotism, rampant corruption, and its potential direct responsibility for the Novi Sad disaster.
In an effort to suppress the ongoing protests, Serbian authorities are using a carrot-and-stick approach. On one hand, they are initiating arrests, harassing protesters, and using intimidation tactics. With full control of state media, they are also working to discredit the protests and their participants, portraying them as a threat to the country’s stability. Simultaneously, they are attempting to divert public attention towards issues like tensions in Kosovo or other unrelated topics. On the other hand, they are offering incentives to various social groups, such as “favourable” loans aimed at helping young people purchase housing.
President Vucic, for his part, has refused to comply with the protesters’ supposed demand to establish a transitional government. However, this demand has not come from the protesters themselves but from the Serbian opposition. This suggests that Vucic is attempting to frame the protests not as a genuine expression of public dissatisfaction with his government, but rather as a calculated effort by his political rivals to overthrow the his regime.
In addition, he compared himself to Syria’s former dictator Bashar al-Assad, insisting that, unlike Assad, he would not flee. This rhetoric, alongside the government’s heavy-handed tactics, has further fuelled public anger, prompting even greater determination among citizens to intensify the protests.
Mass protests have periodically erupted in Serbia since 2016, driven by a range of issues. These include economic hardships, aggressive actions by the security services against the opposition, concerns over lithium mining, preferential treatment of foreign investors, and even mass shootings in urban and rural areas. The two-month-long protest over the tragedy at the train station in Novi Sad differs from previous ones in that for the first time during this period, students and schoolchildren, as well as representatives of the academic community, are participating in mass street protests.
This shift highlights that, despite the appearance of stability, all is not well within Serbia’s political system. It also underscores the depth of discontent simmering within Serbian society.
Yet, these widespread protest sentiments have so far failed to bring about any significant change in the political regime. The main obstacle lies in the government’s firm grip on state institutions, law enforcement, financial resources, and media outlets—all of which are used to suppress, discredit, and marginalise protests and their participants. Perhaps more crucially, Serbia’s opposition is weak, divided, and lacks widespread public support.
Having a political superstructure over the protests widely respected by the population could turn the protests into a powerful tool for challenging and potentially changing Aleksandar Vucic’s regime. However, its absence (which, in particular, the protesters themselves insist on), as well as the peaceful nature of the protests, is not a recipe for removing the power of an authoritarian ruler who will cling to it until the end. So for now, despite the duration and mass nature of the protests, the ruling Serbian regime feels relatively calm. However, that’s for now. In the future, protest sentiments in Serbian society will only intensify, because it is unlikely that Vucic will do anything to improve the situation in the country, so the number of stimuli for new protests will only increase. And as soon as someone appears on the political horizon of Serbia who can truly challenge the ruling regime in Serbia, it will have very serious problems.