"Putin’s popularity in local polls now outstrips Vučić himself." (ANDREJ ISAKOVIC/AFP via Getty Images)
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A recent BBC documentary promises to take the British viewer “inside” Serbia, exposing the country’s support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The language is heightened, evoking Cold War ghosts. “There’s something strange happening in Serbia,” the presenter mutters in hushed amazement. “A shadow hanging over the Balkan nation.” A violinist has inexplicably been commissioned to hang around by a Serbian flag, playing a mournful dirge. The tone connotes that Serbia, like Russia, is a “bad” country, a pro-Putin outpost where a client regime governs a racist, backward population unwilling to relinquish past grievances. The Balkan nation is certainly an outlier in its refusal to join the EU sanctions regime on Russia. But the reasons for this run deeper than mere Slavic solidarity or ethnic chauvinism.
Rather, President Aleksandar Vučić is treading a necessarily complicated line in a vain attempt to appease both Brussels and Moscow, knowing he must soon alienate either his nationalist voter base or the great powers who have him over a barrel. Among Serbs, polling shows that opposition to sanctions on Russia is considerably more likely to be derived from memories of the devastating sanctions imposed on Yugoslavia in the Nineties (44%), as opposed to a vaguer sense that Russia is the country’s “great friend” (24%). A “noisy minority” (21%) do take an unambiguously pro-Russian stance, but the majority of Serbians still back a policy of non-alignment. It may seem clear to many observers that Serbs have an “irrational” and “distorted” relationship with Putin’s pariah state: but to understand why, we must look West as well as East.
The idea that Serbs are mindlessly pro-Putin is immediately complicated by the presence in Belgrade of around 200,000 exiles fleeing Putin’s Russia — doubtless contributing to Vučić’s recent designation of his capital as a modern-day Casablanca, swarming with foreign intelligence assets. Peter Nikitin, the head of anti-war campaign group the Russian Democratic Society, categorises the Russian expat community into three groups: “former activists and political refugees; those who were never active before the war but got so shocked they felt the need to get active; and apolitical, relocated IT people who want to pretend nothing happened”. This third group is the most visible. One local Telegram channel aimed at Russian expats brims with legal advice, job offers, and tips for treating gastritis (with brandy), offering the chance to “chat about life and migration to Serbia — politics prohibited”. Despite such disclaimers, even the relocated digital nomads’ presence here is necessarily political, testing how deep local support for Putin runs.
One set of Russian young professionals frequents Pub 53, a hole-in-the-wall spot owned by another Russian exile. Here, I meet Ana, a software engineer who emphasises the greater freedom of speech and quality of life available here compared to their native Moscow. “No-one can arrest me for my words,” she says. “I’m gay — you see how my friends are — and I’m just here to live my life. There are lots of liberal Russians here, like me.” As these friends arrive, they toast one another with B52 shots mixed with local rakija brandy. The general openness to people like Ana is partly economically motivated, helping to counteract the steady drain of Serbian young professionals into the EU.
Such stories are not universal. Many less educated men of military age grabbed their bags and left overnight for fear of conscription, and now live in hostels or on friends’ couches while they hunt for work. Each morning, a line of young Russian men can be found waiting below a sternly moustachioed statue of Vuk Karadžić, the father of modern Serbia, hoping to be offered cash-in-hand day labour. “The situation is shit,” says Luka, who used to work in a car factory before fleeing the draft. “Many people are going home because there is no work here, only cleaning toilets or deliveries.” But overall, anti-Putin expats have found a home here. While locals complain about (if they do not profit from) soaring rental prices or supermarket-queue etiquette, actual attacks on anti-Putin activists remain rare. “There is a nationalist minority who call us traitors,” says Peter, referring to a recent assault on one activist. “But even if they think we’re weirdos because we’re against Putin, most people are welcoming.”
Anastasija, a Russian psychotherapist and teacher participating in a protest in Belgrade against Russian war crimes, agrees: “Young people here support Ukraine, but many older people support Russia. We’d like to change this, because people don’t have access to information.” Over a year on from the Russian invasion, turn-out at the demonstration is limited — but an opposing, pro-war protest nearby is even more sparsely attended. There, an Orthodox priest fulminates into a microphone, surrounded by a gaggle of protesters brandishing conspiratorial posters: “Serbia will be freed of the servants of the Antichrist”; “Covid genocide”; “Vučić — Will you break the curse of Nato betrayal?” Neither the well-meant humanitarian appeal nor the apocalyptic rant captures the general public mood, with most bystanders hurrying past.
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SubscribeInteresting analysis. I agree that the EU should have offered better prospects and more support if it wanted a future for Serbia more closely tied to Europe. It wanted a closer integration instead, and abandoned the West Balkan. In hindsight a mistake. We woke up in a world where wider influence is more important than closer integration. Now it is too late to be a really credible partner.
Interesting analysis. I agree that the EU should have offered better prospects and more support if it wanted a future for Serbia more closely tied to Europe. It wanted a closer integration instead, and abandoned the West Balkan. In hindsight a mistake. We woke up in a world where wider influence is more important than closer integration. Now it is too late to be a really credible partner.
” Ćorović, recently arrested for pelting a mural of local hero and convicted war criminal Ratko Mladic with eggs, is coruscating [my emphasis] towards her compatriots’ nationalism and “selective memory” over their treatment in the Nineties”
Since coruscating means “sparkling”, and the sense of the sentence seems to mean a combination of excoriating and scathing, I suspect something deeply negative is what is meant. It would be a shame if a beautiful word for a beautiful thing just became another boring synonym for “insulting”, but that is how these things start.
Recently it seems to have happened to “shibboleth”, and “cope”, and it long ago happened to “enormity” and “disinterested”.
After Sarajevo 1914, does anyone seriously ever want to hear the name Serbia again?
After Sarajevo 1914, does anyone seriously ever want to hear the name Serbia again?