SERBIA: Accusations of War Crimes & more – 25th Nov 2025

Dobar dan from Islington This is the Rorshok Serbia Update from the 25th of November twenty twenty-five. A quick summary of what's going down in Serbia.

On Saturday the 22nd, students organized protests in several cities - exactly one year after the faculty blockades began all over the country. The students marched peacefully, as always, demanding accountability for the canopy collapse tragedy in the northern city of Novi Sad which killed sixteen people.

However, Saturday also marked one year since pro-government assailants attacked the students from the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade while they were holding a vigil for the tragedy victims. Recall that the attack directly caused the student protests to intensify, leading the students to block their faculties one by one in protest, expanding their demands to include finding those responsible for the attack on the students.

During Saturday’s protests, students and citizens once again demanded snap elections, saying that President Vucic and his party have been in power for way too long.

Speaking of Vucic, he recently found himself in a tight spot, facing accusations of war crimes in Bosnia. On Tuesday the 18th, Domagoj Margetic, a Croatian investigative journalist filed a complaint with prosecutors in Milan where he accused Vucic of taking part in a sniper tourism program during the war in Bosnia in the early nineties. Margetic brought this topic up as prosecutors in Milan opened an inquiry into alleged Italian nationals who may have taken part in the program.

Sniper tourism refers to a program where foreigners paid Bosnian Serbian soldiers to shoot Bosnian civilians from positions overlooking the capital of Sarajevo. During the war, over 10,000 people were killed, mostly by snipers, with the main targets being Muslim men and young boys.

Vucic vehemently denied taking part in the program, adding that he had never killed or harmed anyone. Domagoj, however, attached evidence showing that Vucic was a volunteer in the war and was an ally to known war criminals from that time.

In other news, Kosovo’s president Osmani announced that they are headed for snap elections following a nine-month-long government deadlock. The decision comes after political parties in Kosovo failed to agree on a governing majority on Wednesday the 19th.

Back in February, Kosovo held parliamentary elections in which the ruling Vetevendosje party won but failed to secure the majority it needed to form a government. Despite the talks the political parties engaged in, they failed to reach an agreement, and the constitutional deadline to form a government passed on Wednesday.

The snap elections are scheduled for the 28th of December, which will be the seventh poll since Kosovo’s independence from Serbia.

Now for an update to a story we have been covering for several months now: the US’s sanctions on the Serbian state-owned NIS energy company. The Serbian energy minister announced that the Russian owners of NIS agreed to sell their majority stake in an attempt to lift the sanctions from the company, adding that the US has yet to respond to the news. NIS’ current priority is to keep its refineries operating due to the heating season being in full swing. It has also asked the US for a licence extension, requesting permission to continue importing energy during the ownership talks.

A quick recap: the US imposed sanctions on NIS in January for its majorly Russian ownership, which they said Russia used to fund the war in Ukraine. The only prerequisite for lifting the sanctions is for NIS to completely remove Russia from its owners’ list.

Serbia could face even more troubles due to its close relations with Russia. The US President Trump recently announced that his party is working on a bill that will propose introducing sanctions to countries that are doing business with Russia. While Trump has not mentioned Serbia specifically, it is more than likely that it will suffer from such measures, as several Serbian companies have engaged in exports of goods to Russia during the war in Ukraine. The NIS sanctions are bad enough, but the overall sanctions from the US could severely hinder Serbia’s social-economic growth.

Serbia began eyeing Ukraine as its new collaborator in trade. The Serbian government expressed interest in boosting imports of Ukrainian products, particularly agricultural commodities. They also brought up the ongoing negotiations to increase the export of Serbian goods to Ukraine, such as meat, dairy products and animal feed.

Both Serbia and Ukraine have been discussing the opening of logistics corridors to circumvent existing transit limitations due to the ongoing war between Ukraine and Russia, in order to improve the movement of goods between the countries.

In the media world, don’t forget that our Youtube channel is still up. The ruling regime took us down once because we tell the truth. But we’ll keep fighting for media freedom.

In some news about the economy, the Fiscal Council spoke about the proposed Serbian budget for twenty twenty-six. The Council deemed the budget for twenty twenty-six sustainable financially, with the planned deficit being around 300 billion dinars, which is around three billion dollars, or three percent of the projected money supply for twenty twenty-six.

However, the council highlighted the lack of transparency, noting that the Serbian government has the power to change the fiscal policy mid-year, bypassing the standard parliamentary procedures. They said that such a power has been used in Serbia for years, mainly to finance ad hoc economic policies that should instead be discussed in public debates.

Ever since the introduction of profit margin caps, retail giant Delhaize has been scuffling with the Serbian government, saying that the new measures are damaging the company. However, the beef extended to the Central Bank governor, who has been closely monitoring Delhaize’s fiscal decisions.

It all intensified on Wednesday the 19th, when the governor accused Delhaize of committing tax fraud by transferring millions of dinars abroad through a falsified liquidation procedure. Delheize denied the accusations, adding that it paid 700 million dinars, which is around seven million dollars, in taxes and that it will appeal the tax authority’s reclassification.

Since we mentioned the Central Bank, it announced that the net foreign direct investment (or FDI) decreased by more than fifty percent from January to September compared to the same period in twenty twenty-four. They underlined that the total inflows amounted to around 300 billion dinars, around three billion dollars, which is a drop of around forty percent year-on-year. As for the total outflows, they stood at around 110 billion dinars, around a billion dollars - an annual jump of 130 percent.

The Bank said that the main reason for this trend is the ongoing tensions in Serbia, which are prompting investors to ignore the country.

Amid the declining FDI, the Council of Europe Development Bank announced that it will give Serbia a loan of over twenty billion dinars, around 230 million dollars. The funds are aimed at infrastructure, mainly the renovation of municipal roads, where remote communities have poor transport infrastructure. The project will focus on resurfacing asphalt, upgrading drainage systems, and ensuring year-round access to roads, even in harsh weather.

Many health centers across Serbia have recently begun introducing night shifts to provide citizens with twenty-four-hour care. Until now, the only medical center open during the night was emergency care, with a significantly smaller service spectrum than in hospitals. Due to the overcrowding in emergency centers, hospitals in Belgrade, Novi Sad, Nis, Kragujevac, and many other cities decided to introduce night shifts for doctors, nurses, technicians and lab assistants to treat people with non-life-threatening issues.

Closing this edition with cultural news, Belgrade’s Zemun Heritage Museum is currently holding an exhibition of paintings from the Borghese Gallery in Rome, including six Caravaggio paintings, which are exclusive to the Gallery. Aside from Caravaggio, the exhibition also features works from Botticelli, Raphael, Titian, and Rubens, among others. The exhibition will end on the 5th of December and is open every day except Mondays.

For more information about the Zemun Heritage Museum, check out the link in the show notes!

Aaand that’s it for this week! Thank you for joining us!

Don't forget that our new very cool t-shirts are out now! Set up your personal collection and we'll give you a discount code for your friends! But it gets better… The person who sells the most t-shirts with the discount code will get a free trip to Lisbon in early April. Check the link in the show notes!

Vidimo se!