Protests and police repression in Serbia turn increasingly violent as early elections come under threat

Brussels – Violence is spreading across the streets of Serbia. For several days now, clashes between anti-government protesters and riot police have erupted in many cities—from the capital, Belgrade, to Novi Sad and Valjevo—leaving dozens of people arrested and beaten, and the empty offices of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) set on fire.

“President Aleksandar Vučić thought that unprecedented police brutality would frighten people away. It failed. Instead, anger has grown,” says political scientist Srdjan Cvijić, president of the International Advisory Committee of the Belgrade Centre for Security Policy (BSCP), in an interview with The New Union Post. After nine months of continuous peaceful mass protests against corruption and autocratic backsliding, the atmosphere in the country has shifted.

Since 13 August, pro-government loyalists have staged counter-demonstrations, attacking protesters with the backing of police officers, who have also deployed stun grenades and tear gas. At a press conference on 17 August, President Vučić threatened “extraordinary measures” against protesters demanding his resignation, and welcomed Russia’s pledge to assist its Serbian partner.

While Russia has supported Vučić’s repression “from the outset”, Cvijić notes that pro-democracy protesters can hardly rely on outside support and “no longer” expect help from the European Union. “Not only students, but citizens more broadly believe that democracy can only be defended through their own efforts,” he adds. Although EU governments and institutions may criticise Vučić’s methods, “they show little appetite to intervene directly to support the democratic process.”

Escalating violence

“The protesters’ violence was, in reality, a response to state violence,” Cvijić recalls. It all began on 10–12 August in three northern Serbian towns—Bačka Palanka, Vrbas, and Bački Petrovac—where the government deployed “gangs of criminals” armed with batons to beat up local residents. Instead of stopping the assaults, police officers turned on the victims. “This triggered demonstrations across the country in response to the authorities’ open criminalisation of dissent and aggression,” the Serbian political scientist explains.

Over Vučić’s 13 years in power, “democratic standards have deteriorated year by year,” and the current wave of mass arrests and shocking images of students detained in police barracks—kneeling with their heads against the wall, “like we were in El Salvador”—show just “how serious the situation has become.” Repression is not new in Vučić’s playbook, what has changed is the effort to “legitimise” it through near-total control of the national media. Day after day, he frames politics as a question of “security” and brands demonstrators as “violent and subversive.”

His latest press conference captured the strategy. On the one hand, he openly admitted that riot police lack the capacity to contain simultaneous protests across multiple cities. At the same time, he threatened that, after a week’s pause, protesters would face “all the determination of the Serbian state.” Opposition parties fear he could even deploy the army on the streets, and there is speculation that he might declare a state of emergency. “He attempted something similar during Covid-19 crises, and it didn’t work at all,” Cvijić says.

The early election scenario

Over the past few months, one of the most urgent demands of pro-democracy demonstrators has been the call for early elections. The resignation of Prime Minister Miloš Vučević at the end of January was never seen as sufficient, and his successor, Đuro Macut—appointed in April 2025—is widely regarded as just another of Vučić’s puppets. Nevertheless, the Serbian president has repeatedly rejected demands for early elections, dismissing the protest movement as a “colour revolution,” an alleged foreign plot to overthrow him.

As Cvijić notes, the government resists calls for early elections because “Vučić’s party is polling badly, which is one reason it seeks to crush the demonstrations.” Yet, he argues, early elections are “the only way to bring the political crisis to an end,” ideally preceded by a transitional government charged with “freeing the media from party control and creating the conditions for genuinely free and fair elections.”

Preparing for such a scenario, Serbian students have asked opposition parties to step aside and have drafted a list of candidates after interviewing many people willing to run. The final list has not yet been made public, but—so far as is known—”they ruled out anyone who has previously held government or party leadership positions,” Cvijić explains.

In Serbia, that no illusions that the next elections will be really free and fair. Yet this could work against the Serbian president. “Early elections will be called if Vučić himself believes he can still prevail through fraud, as in the past,” Cvijić points out. The risk is a miscalculation. Until November 2024, he enjoyed “near North Korean–style support,” which has since dropped below 50%. In June 2025, to cling to power in two small municipalities—Zaječar and Kosjerić—”he sent gangs of criminals to intimidate the population, even on election day.” If he was willing to go that far for two relatively not so significant towns, Cvijić warns, “the implications for a national vote are clear.”

Almost a year of protests in Serbia

Following the collapse of Novi Sad’s railway station canopy on 1 November 2024—resulted in 16 deaths—a wave of mass protests erupted across the country. After students were attacked in Belgrade during a silent tribute to the victims, blockades of educational institutions began on 22 November at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts, with other faculties and high schools joining in soon after.

The level of organisation behind the protests has reached remarkable heights all over the country. Universities are occupied, with decisions made through grassroots democracy in student plenums. Schools at all levels are either closed or holding discussions between teachers, parents, and pupils on the state of democracy and education. Every day at 11:52 a.m.—the time of the Novi Sad tragedy—students block major crossroads in Belgrade and in the other cities, observing 16 minutes of complete silence. People of all ages join their marches and urge to continue. On 12 May, a group of students ran nearly 2,000 kilometres—from Belgrade to Brussels—to raise awareness among the public and EU institutions.

It is clear that President Vučić’s regime cannot meet the students’ anti-corruption demands without jeopardising its own survival. Take the Novi Sad railway station, for example—reopened just months before the tragedy after a three-year renovation by a consortium of Chinese companies. Yet, no public information is available on the tender or the project behind the infrastructure.

Repression has intensified after huge protest in Belgrade on 30 June, when dozens of students and citizens were beaten and arrested. “Advancing on the EU path requires citizens can express their views freely and journalists can report without intimidation or attacks,” European Commissioner for Enlargement Marta Kos stated following the new wave of violent clashes and police repression on 14 August.

However, Serbian students see the EU prioritising economic interests over core democratic values. The lithium extraction project in the Jadar River Valley is the most frequently cited example. The EU-Serbia Memorandum of Understanding on lithium, signed in July 2024, concerns the extraction of a resource crucial to the EU automotive sector’s green transition from one of the world’s largest deposits. More than just an economic deal, it exposes the nature of Vučić’s grip on power and the European Commission’s vulnerability, which gave the green light to the Jadar Mine as an EU strategic raw materials project on 4 June 2025.