SERBIA: Mass Belgrade Protest & more – 1st July 2025

Dobar dan from Keswick Village! This is the Rorshok Serbia Update from the 1st of July twenty twenty-five. A quick summary of what's going down in Serbia.

On Saturday the 28th, Belgrade students marked the national holiday Vidovdan by holding a mass student protest with hundreds of thousands of attendees. Parallel to the student protest at the Slavija square, regime supporters were gathered, as always, in the nearby Pioneer park tent camp. The protesters demanded the dismantling of the camp and snap parliamentary elections.

As the protest was coming to an end, students called for civil disobedience, urging citizens to participate in street blockades and in activities that would disrupt the work of state institutions, as a means of protest. President Vucic and his ruling Serbian Progressive Party ordered the gendarmerie and the special police units to intervene, resulting in more than seventy arrests and numerous violent attacks on the protesters. The police said that the arrested students were taken in on charges of terrorism.

Vidovdan’s protest was the latest in a series of student-organized demonstrations ever since the canopy collapse in the northern city of Novi Sad which killed sixteen people. After eight months of faculty blockades, students keep demanding justice and state accountability, but to no avail.

On another note, German MP Peter Beyer called for the dismantling of parallel structures in the predominantly Serbian north of Kosovo due to them enabling the operation of violent gangs. Last week, Kosovo police discovered an arsenal of weapons in the northern city of Zvecan, stating that there were enough weapons to carry out a terrorist act. Beyer said that the Serbian institutions are to blame, but did not provide any evidence to support his statements.

Serbian institutions in the north continue to operate in Kosovo, despite the targeted shutdowns of many by the Kosovo police in recent years. The Serbian government explained that these structures provide protection to the Serbian people from Kosovo.

While on the topic of bilateral relations, the Russian foreign intelligence service has accused Serbia of exporting ammunition and arms to NATO countries so that they would reach Ukraine. They said that the Serbian companies are well aware of where their arms end up, noting that sending them through foreign countries does little to cover it up.

President Vucic said that Serbia had stopped exporting ammunition altogether, adding that that applies to arms exports to Ukraine too. He said that Serbia cannot control where the weapons exported to other countries end up, denying that Serbian companies have motives to supply Ukraine.

Speaking of Russia, Prime Minister Macut gave a statement to the Russian state media on Friday the 27th against the LGBT+ community in Serbia. Macut said that Serbia cannot accept the LGBT agenda due to it being contrary to traditional and Christian values.

NGOs for LGBT+ rights condemned Macut’s statements, noting that by using the term LGBT ideology, Macut reduced the citizens to an ideology, which they said was an act of dehumanization and discrimination. The NGO Belgrade Pride said that such statements from a high-ranking official are also dangerous, especially in Serbia where members of the LGBT community experience violence and oppression on the regular.

They then told Macut that his agenda of prioritizing family values should begin with determining who is responsible for the Novi Sad railway station tragedy, since its victims included children, their grandparents, and a pregnant woman

In other news, President Vucic announced that he is working towards securing contracts that would bring foreign universities to Serbia. Vucic said that Serbia had already reached out to a number of Italian universities, and that some Russian and Chinese universities have also shown interest in opening their premises in Serbia. He added that the goal was to boost competition and improve the universities’ performance, accusing state universities of slacking due to their support for the ongoing student blockades and protests.

While Vucic presents the introduction of foreign universities as a positive, academics are opposing the idea. Professors and deans said that foreign universities would operate without accreditation from Serbia’s National Accreditation Body, bypassing quality assurance mechanisms.

In an update from our previous show, last week, we talked about the US sanctions on the Serbian state-owned gas company NIS and their request to the US to delay the introduction of sanctions by thirty days. On Friday the 27th, the US Treasury Department announced that they agreed to the postponement, with the new deadline being the 29th of July. The US is requesting that NIS change the Russian share of the company ownership, implying it should buy out the Russian part, noting that Russia is using the NIS profits to fund its invasion of Ukraine. This is the fourth sanction waiver NIS has received, with the company saying that it needs more time to work on the shareholder proportions.

Recall that Russian gas companies hold more than fifty percent of the stakes in NIS, with the second largest shareholder being the Serbian government.

Onto the economy, the State Statistical Office published the salary data for the month of April and reported that the average net monthly salary amounted to around 110,000 dinars, which is around 1,100 dollars, while the monthly inflation was four percent. Between January and April salaries increased by around seven percent annually in real terms.

Speaking of inflation, the journalistic portal NIN published an article about grade inflation and its influence on the entry thresholds for high schools. The article goes over the growing number of straight A students in schools, warning of a potential disproportionate grading where good marks do not reflect the knowledge of the students.

The problem with grade inflation is that it makes the majority of pupils get straight A’s, which then increases the entry benchmark for certain high schools. Due to higher average grades, the students have to ace their entrance exam, which also depends on luck and strategy, apart from knowledge.

Certain teachers told NIN that such a trend is driven by the parents demanding better grades for their children, but also by schools inflating students’ grades in order to increase their reputation. They also stressed that the current environment in Serbia, with all the slander of students done by the government, is promoting the downgrade of the education system, favoring those loyal to the regime.

On Tuesday the 24th, the World Economic Forum published their annual Gender Gap Index where they rank 148 countries with scores from zero to one based on gender gaps on economic, political, education, and health-based criteria. Serbia secured the 26th place on the list with an age gap index of 0.77, making Serbia the country with the highest number of women in political positions in the region.

However, they noted that women in Serbia still earn less than men, even when they are more qualified than their male counterparts. They said that the worst gaps are seen in the highest-ranking positions. The best-ranked country was Iceland, with a score of 0.93, while the worst-ranked was Pakistan with 0.57.

In some news about the infrastructure, President Vucic announced on Saturday the 28th that a high-speed railway link connecting the northern cities of Novi Sad and Subotica will start operating by the end of August. The link was previously closed due to the canopy collapse tragedy. Vucic said that the link will significantly reduce the travel times from Belgrade to Subotica. The government plans to connect the link to Budapest, Hungary, as part of the European Transport Corridor X.

As for the culture, the northern town of Indjija will hold its 12th annual Shakespeare Festival of drama, celebrating the work of William Shakespeare and promoting local actors and theaters. This year, the festival will take place from Thursday the 3rd to Sunday the 6th, and will feature performances from students of Art Academies from all over the world. Tickets retail at around 1,200 dinars, which is around twelve dollars, and are available for purchase online.

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

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

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