SERBIA: Sanctioned Polititians & more – 7th May 2024

Dobar dan from BA! This is the Rorshok Serbia Update from the 7th of May twenty twenty-four. A quick summary of what's going down in Serbia.

Milos Vucevic, the Prime Minister-designate, announced on Tuesday the 30th of April that Aleksandar Vulin, the US-sanctioned, pro-Russian politician, will be one of the deputy prime ministers in Vucevic’s cabinet. Predrag Petrovic, the research director at the Belgrade Center for Security Policy, said that including Vulin in the new government would strengthen ties with Russia. The Movement of Free Citizens, an opposition party, heavily criticized this decision, adding that Vulin’s involvement in the government would ruin Serbia’s progress in its path to the EU.

Recall that in July of twenty twenty-three, the US sanctioned Vulin, accusing him of involvement in illegal arms shipments, misuse of public office, and drug trafficking. Prior to the sanctions, Vulin was the head of Serbia’s intelligence agency BIA. He also has two medals of honor from Russia.

Moving on, one supporter of The Green-Left Front opposition party suffered injuries after an attack on Wednesday the 1st. The party reported that their activist was standing outside of his home wearing a shirt with the party’s logo, when three masked and hooded individuals armed with clubs attacked him. The victim sustained several injuries, including a broken rib. The opposition party blamed the attack on the ruling Serbian Progressive Party, or SNS, labeling the country unsafe for those who stand up to the party.

The Green-Left Front is a member of the Serbia Against Violence opposition coalition, and was one of the organizers of the twenty twenty-three Serbian protests which ensued after the Vladislav Ribnikar school shooting.

On that note about the school shooting, exactly one year after the incident, on Friday the 3rd, Vladislav Ribnikar Elementary School in Belgrade held a commemoration ceremony titled Awakening. On the 3rd of May, twenty twenty-three, a thirteen-year-old boy opened fire and killed nine students at the Belgrade elementary school. After the attack, the police apprehended the perpetrator and arrested his parents.

Families, relatives, and friends of the victims, along with many citizens, attended the ceremony and paid their respects. They laid flower wreaths and lit candles in front of the school, and several teachers held speeches about the victims and the incident itself. During Friday's vigil, Serbian television stations interrupted their broadcasts, showing the words We remember in white on a black screen for sixty seconds to represent a minute of silence for the victims.

On Sunday the 5th, Kosovo authorities banned Petar Petkovic, the director of the Office for Kosovo, from entering their premises. Petkovic was planning to celebrate Orthodox Easter by attending the midnight liturgy in the Visoki Decani monastery and the morning service at the Gracanica monastery, both located in Kosovo. He said that his visit would have been exclusively of a religious nature and without any political intentions. However, authorities in Pristina denied his visit without giving an explanation. The Serbian government said that they had announced Petkovic’s visit on time, accusing Kosovo of creating unrest between the two, thus annulling all the progress of the ongoing normalization dialogue.

Speaking of Kosovo, its recent candidacy to be a member of the Council of Europe is facing difficulties, as French President Emmanuel Macron called on the council to postpone the decision on Kosovo’s accession. Prior to France’s request, most of the council member states supported the decision to add Kosovo as a member, with Serbia being the main critic of such a decision. However, Macron said that Kosovo needs to show progress in fulfilling its obligations from the twenty thirteen Brussels agreement to join the Council. Among others, these obligations include the formation of the Community of Serbian Municipalities, or CSM, which France mostly focused on.

The CSM is a planned inter-municipal association of ethnic Serbian majority municipalities in Kosovo, introduced in twenty thirteen when Kosovo and Serbia signed a normalization agreement. Kosovo is still yet to make progress on the CSM establishment.

On Friday the 3rd, media watchdog Reporters Without Borders published its twenty twenty-four World Press Freedom Index, in which they evaluated 180 countries based on media freedom. Countries had scores ranging from zero to a hundred, with a hundred being the highest possible level of press freedom and zero the lowest. Serbia ranked 98th with around fifty points, dropping seven places compared to twenty twenty-three. Reporters Without Borders explained that the main culprit for the drop on the list is Serbia’s political climate, in which members of the ruling SNS party target journalists and control the national broadcasters. The country with the highest score was Norway, and the last nation on the list was Eritrea.

In some news on the economy, the Serbian Statistics Office, or RZS, said on Tuesday the 30th of April that the GDP in the country increased by around five percent in the first quarter of twenty twenty-four, compared to the same period last year. Taking into account Serbia’s budget for twenty twenty-four, the RZS predicts that the annual GDP will increase by around four percent.

The RZS also spoke about the rise in employment in Serbia, stating that the number of workers increased by around one percent in the first quarter of twenty twenty-four compared to the same period last year, amounting to two million in April. Out of those two million, more than 1.5 million people are working in legal entities, around 400,000 are entrepreneurs, and the rest are agricultural workers.

More about the RZS, as it reported that the external goods trade in the first quarter of twenty twenty-four amounted to around seventeen billion dollars, which is a decrease of about three percent compared to the same period last year. The exports were worth around eight billion dollars, while the imports totaled around ten billion dollars. The northern region of Vojvodina had the largest share of exports, with around thirty percent, and Belgrade had the largest share of imports, with about forty percent. The main countries receiving exports from Serbia were Germany, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Italy, China, and Hungary.

Last week marked the beginning of the work to upgrade the railway connecting the southern city of Nis with the southeastern town of Dimitrovgrad, which is the only section of the Pan-European Railway Corridor X that is still unelectrified. The railway section, which is around eighty kilometers or around fifty miles long, will renovate its single-track line, and will have an additional bypass running to the north of Nis. The International Railway Journal said that this renovation will enable the average train speed to jump to a maximum of 120 kilometers or seventy miles per hour, from the current maximum of fifty kilometers or thirty miles per hour. They added that with this reform, the railway would cut on carbon emissions due to the replacement of its diesel traction with electricity.

In other news, a team from the German Cluster of Excellence ROOTS research institution discovered a late Neolithic settlement near the Timisoara River in a northeastern region of Serbia called Banat. The discovery features a settlement structure that covers thirteen hectares, or around thirty acres. The surface material suggests that the settlement was a dwelling place of the Vinca culture, which dates back to between fifty-four hundred and forty-four hunded BC. However, the archeologists reported that there are also strong influences from the regional Banat culture.

Speaking of culture, on the 12th of May, the Belgrade Philharmonic will perform in a concert titled Magical Music From the Movies. The concert will feature soundtracks from various Disney movies, such as Mulan, The Little Mermaid, and The Lion King. The event will take place in Belgrade’s MTS Hall. The tickets range from fourteen to fifty dollars, and are available for purchase at the MTS Hall’s box office and on their website. For more information, check out the link in the show notes.

And that’s it for this week! Thanks your joining us!

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Do daljnjeg, zbogom!