Is Serbia heading towards a Serbo-Maidan?

Mass demonstrations against Aleksandar Vučić's government could turn brutal over the next year.

For more than a year, Serbia has been gripped by a relentless chain of marches, blockades, campus sit-ins and mass demonstrations. The riots first erupted after the Novi Sad railway station disaster in November 2024, when 16 people were killed when a concrete canopy collapsed.

What began as grief quickly turned to rage, and that rage has become a permanent feature of daily Serbian life. The streets have not emptied. The screams have not died down. Yet, for all the spectacle and scale, Serbia is no closer to political transformation than it was when the students first took to the streets.

Last March, I argued in this magazine that political naivety had hampered the protests. They had the right numbers but not the strategy; they embodied public anger but lacked a plan to turn the anger into change.

Ten months later, that assessment still rings true. The opposition has not gained any tangible influence, President Aleksandar Vučić remains firmly in control, and the government has responded to the unrest not with concessions but with defiance. Yet the protesters have not gone away. On the contrary: The movement has become more entrenched, more confrontational, and increasingly combustible. This pattern merits a troubling comparison with Ukraine between 2013 and 2014, when a wave of massive civil unrest and revolutionary violence ultimately toppled pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych. Is Serbia heading for its own Euromaidan – a “Serbo-Maidan,” if you will – which could see a similarly bloody turn on the streets of Belgrade?

While there are still reasons to doubt that the unrest in Serbia will escalate so quickly, it is increasingly difficult to imagine any other outcome. Early parliamentary elections are due later this year, but the odds are so heavily in favor of the government, through its dominance of the domestic media and a powerful reward system, that the protest movement is almost certain to face a major disappointment. Whether this leaves the movement deflated or pushes it towards more radical measures will make all the difference between the same miserable status quo or a brutal Serbo-Maidan to come.

Of course, Vučić — an autocratic kleptocrat often misunderstood as a right-wing populist — is no stranger to ignoring demonstrations. Since he was first elected in 2017, barely a year has passed without mass protests. There were anti-lockdown protests during the COVID-19 pandemic, protests against mining giant Rio Tinto in 2021 and again in 2024, the “Serbia Against Violence” protests of 2023, and many others. But apart from the violent anti-lockdown protests that forced the government to halt new lockdown measures in 2020, all of those uprisings eventually died down.

The current wave, by contrast, continues without any breakthrough or collapse. The protests are larger than any Vučić has ever faced, although it is difficult to get precise figures. Widely accepted estimates range from 100,000 to 325,000 for the largest protests. (The highest figure given by the government, which regularly underestimates them, is 107,000.) Protesters have organized numerous blockades of major roads, which the government claims are hurting Serbia’s economic performance. The situation has become a total political stalemate. But something has to change. Either the government willingly backs down (unthinkable) or the dissidents escalate further (possible, but unlikely until after the elections).

A year later, the movement’s fundamental problem remains unchanged. It still lacks a political vehicle capable of channeling widespread public discontent. Activists have finally accepted that, despite Serbia’s Potemkin democracy, they will have to defeat Vučić at the ballot box and have been calling for early elections for months now. While Vučić’s support for elections by the end of 2026 seems like a concession to the protests, he could just as easily push them back until next spring if he sees it in his interest. But while opposition politicians play, at best, supporting roles in the protests, they have so far failed to produce anything resembling viable candidates for this year or next. No charismatic unifying figure has emerged. No coherent coalition has formed.

Efforts to expand the movement beyond urban intellectuals and toward provincial workers, who remain Vučić's most reliable voters, have been few. The anti-government bloc focuses on abstract ideals, such as greater transparency, accountable institutions, and the rule of law, but is unable to offer anything tangible to Vučić's wavering or undecided voters. Citizens cannot live on media freedoms alone.

Meanwhile, Vučić’s government – ​​already skilled at cracking down on dissent – ​​has become increasingly confrontational. It regularly uses plainclothes provocateurs at demonstrations. The sight of strong men with shaved heads hiding behind police cordons and throwing fireworks or garbage into crowds to cause chaos and justify the intervention of security forces is common. Among these individuals are hardened criminals, including a football hooligan once convicted of killing a French fan in Belgrade before his sudden release from prison a few years ago. As opposition figures are physically attacked by pro-government thugs, it clearly illustrates that the regime is willing to tap into Serbia’s underworld networks to maintain control.

There are also credible allegations – though still officially denied – that during a demonstration last March, police used a military-grade sonic weapon to disperse the crowd. The fact that such a claim is even more credible reflects the increasingly militarized stance of the state. From the perspective of many protesters, Vučić has also given up on the claim of restraint.

Meanwhile, unrest has spread outside Belgrade, particularly to northern towns where protesters have vandalized local offices of Vucic's Serbian Progressive Party and clashed with party loyalists.

What was once a largely peaceful civic movement has begun to show divisions. People are losing patience and the feeling of repetition without progress has produced a burning frustration./TheGeoPost.