SERBIA: Culture Minister Faces Charges & more – 9th Dec 2025

Dobar dan from BA! This is the Rorshok Serbia Update from the 9th of December twenty twenty-five. A quick summary of what's going down in Serbia.

On Thursday the 4th, president Vucic announced that early parliamentary elections will take place next year. Speaking to the pro-regime Pink TV, Vucic said that the most realistic period for early elections is late twenty twenty-six, but he said that they could take place as early as May.

Early polls have been the burning topic in Serbia for the past year. As soon as the student protests erupted, the main focus quickly shifted to the nation asking for a new government - one that would respect democracy and the rule of law. Recall that the protests began after a deadly collapse of a railway station canopy, which killed sixteen people, with the perpetrators still at large.

On that note about elections, Dr Aleksandar Dikic, an MD, political activist and journalist, spoke about how the opposition needs to handle the pre-election campaign when going head-to-head with Vucic. In his essay, Dikic noted that the current state of affairs in the country is too erratic and primarily anti-Vucic, with the opposition lacking a clear agenda on how to one-up him.

He went on to write that the opposition’s strategy for winning the elections must include acknowledgment of Vucic’s good policies, such as the upkeeping of peace in Kosovo and Serbia’s good reputation when it comes to migrants.

Dikic’s essay tries to portray the unstable environment, which the opposition and the protesting students are currently in due to Vucic’s long and powerful rule. He concluded with the thought that unity against only one entity is too shallow for any meaningful progress.

You can check out Dikic’s piece in Serbian with the link in the show notes.

When it comes to other governmental figures, Nikola Selakovic, the minister of culture, has been charged with abuse of office in connection to the planned demolition of the former General Staff building. On Thursday the 4th, the Prosecutor's Office for Combating Organized Crime concluded that Selakovic forged documents in an attempt to remove the building from the registry of cultural assets so that it could be demolished.

The General Staff building was placed under protection as a cultural asset after it was ruined in the nineteen ninety-nine US bombing of Serbia. However, it has recently been a popular topic of discussion as the government proposed demolishing the building to sell the land to a company linked to Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, which plans to build a Trump hotel on the site. Activists and architects, alongside the opposition and student protesters, heavily opposed the deal, labeling it insulting.

The US’s ongoing sanctions on the Serbian state-owned energy company NIS keep impacting Serbia’s energy reserves. As part of the sanctions, the US ordered most EU-based pipelines to halt their oil exports to NIS, leading its main Pancevo refinery to experience a severe lack of oil, forcing it to close. In the weeks leading up to the decision to cease operations, Serbia had been in talks with the US, trying to secure an operating licence for NIS and its refineries so that it could keep supplying its customers with oil. However, the US denied the licence, and Serbian officials were left to find a different solution.

Recall that the US sanctioned NIS due to its majorly Russian ownership and is asking the company to completely remove Russians as shareholders.

On the other hand, Serbia is holding tightly to Russia, as it is considering becoming a member of the BRICS New Development Bank, where Russia has a significant influence. A ruling party MP said that there is a real possibility of Serbia becoming a member, after the third meeting between Serbian officials and the BRICS Bank director on the topic that took place on Wednesday the 3rd. Joining the Bank doesn’t mean that Serbia will join the BRICS, but it could indicate that the country is looking into alternative options to the EU.

BRICS, as well as its New Development Bank, is mainly disliked in Europe, because its purpose is to develop the economy without Western influence, and the EU considers it a rival alliance. BRICS member states include Russia, China, India, and Brazil, among others.

Not only is Serbia considering joining Russia-led alliances, but it is also still defying the EU over sanctions against Russia. On Monday the 8th, the EU announced that Serbia was the only candidate country that failed to align itself with the Union’s new decision to extend restrictive measures against Russia because of its war in Ukraine. As a part of the measures, the EU would target entities and bodies in Russia that contribute to the war. So far, the EU has introduced nineteen rounds of sanctions on Russia, but Serbia didn’t join any of them.

Serbia is one of the very few European countries that have not yet sanctioned Russia, with the main reasons being its policy of non-alignment with the West or the East, as well as Russia’s decision not to recognize Kosovo’s independence from Serbia.

Speaking of Kosovo, Serbian List, the Serbian-backed political party in Kosovo, has been denied participation in the upcoming early parliamentary elections scheduled for the 28th of December. Kosovo’s Central Election Commission announced that the majority of its members were against the certification of Serbian List. The certification would have allowed the party to run in the elections. However, other Serbian-led parties said that the voting on whether the Serbian List party should be certified ended in a tie, but that the Commission singlehandedly decided not to certify it. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and the EU office in Kosovo condemned the Electoral Commission, adding that they are disappointed and concerned by the lack of inclusivity and transparency during the pre-electoral process.

Recall that elections in Kosovo have always been a field trip for increasing tensions between Serbians and Albanians living there, due to a turbulent history between the two nations, mostly stemming from Serbia's not recognizing Kosovo’s independence.

In other news, UN human rights experts called on Serbia on Friday the 5th to address the hostile environment in which reporters work. They said that attacks and intimidation tactics against journalists have been at an all-time high, reporting patterns of harassment, smear campaigns, physical assaults, doxxing and online threats. The UN experts accused the Serbian government of systematically endangering journalists when they did not cater to the regime’s agenda.

As we have been reporting in previous episodes, Rorshok has been a victim of the ruling regime’s online harassment, as our YouTube channel was taken down because we tell the truth: we are not here to serve the current government. We have launched a new channel, so we can keep reporting on what’s going down in Serbia, regardless of the ruling regime’s agenda.

Meanwhile, The Regional Job Fair which took place in October conducted a survey on job satisfaction among Serbian citizens. With more than 3,000 respondents, the results showed that employees mostly value salaries and the quality of interpersonal relations in their workplace when choosing a job. The average expected monthly salary amounted to around 130,000 dinars, around 1,300 dollars, which is one of the lowest salary expectations in the region.

In some news about the economy, the finance ministry announced on Friday the 5th that Serbia’s budget deficit amounted to around seventy billion dinars, which is around 730 million dollars, in the first ten months of twenty twenty-five. The deficit doubled compared to twenty twenty-four. According to The finance ministry, one of the reasons behind the deficit’s rise is the decreasing non-tax revenue.

Next up, on Wednesday the 3rd, the minister of construction announced that the Belgrade-Budapest railroad will begin operations in February next year. With the Serbian part of the railroad completed, the only work remaining is on the Hungarian side. The construction minister said that the Belgrade-Budapest line will provide citizens with a quicker, less expensive travel option to the EU, providing an alternative to bus and car travel to Hungary.

Closing this edition on a cultural note, Belgrade will host an electronic music party called ILLUSIONS on Saturday the 13th featuring Maceo Plex as its main attraction. Alongside Plex, the lineup includes Raxon, Avision and Vahicabi - all famous for their hypnotic sets and melodic techno sounds. Tickets are available online and retail at 2,900 dinars, around thirty dollars.

For more information about the ILLUSIONS party, check out the link in the show notes!

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

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