NYT: The recent election seems only to have pushed Vucic closer to Moscow

The accusations leveled by Russia’s ambassador to Serbia were Moscow’s latest attempt to thwart a diplomatic campaign to lure Serbia out of Russia’s sphere of influence.

Fishing in Serbia’s troubled waters after disputed parliamentary elections, Russia on Monday accused the West of orchestrating anti-government street protests in Belgrade, the Serbian capital, which erupted into violence on Sunday night.

The claims by Russia’s ambassador to Serbia, Alexander Botsan-Harchenko, of a Western conspiracy were Moscow’s latest attempts to thwart a so far largely unsuccessful diplomatic campaign by the United States and Europe to lure Serbia out of Russia’s zone of influence and break traditionally strong relations between the two Slavic and Orthodox Christian nations.

Previously peaceful street protests in Belgrade against what the opposition said were rigged parliamentary elections on December 17 turned violent on Sunday after demonstrators tried to storm the capital’s city council building and were fired on with tear gas by riot police.

The Russian ambassador said in a television interview that there was “irrefutable evidence” that the “unrest” had been instigated by the West. This reflected claims by Serbia’s strongman, President Aleksandar Vucic, that his government had been attacked by outside forces seeking a “color revolution,” a term coined by Russia to describe popular uprisings, which it always dismisses as Western conspiracies.

“This was an attempt at a violent takeover of the state institutions of the Republic of Serbia,” Vucic told TV Pink, a pro-government television channel, calling allegations of electoral irregularities “lies” by his political opponents.

There is no evidence that Western governments instigated last week’s protests against Vucic and the elections in Belgrade, which were stolen by his opponents.

Protests against the elections continued on Monday. A demonstration led by university students drew only a modest turnout but blocked traffic on a central Belgrade road to the seat of government.

A report last Monday by election observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said Serbian voters had been offered a wide choice of candidates and “freedom of expression and assembly were generally respected”. But, it said, the ruling party had enjoyed a “lopsided situation” because “pressure on voters, as well as the decisive involvement of the president and the systematic advantages of the ruling party, undermined the electoral process in general”.

Vucic’s ruling Serbian Progressive Party defeated the opposition in this month’s parliamentary vote, but fared less well in the Belgrade City Council elections, winning a narrow victory that the opposition attributed to voters it said were smuggled into the capital from other parts of the country, such as neighboring Kosovo and Bosnia.

While the opposition conceded defeat in the re-vote in parliament, it promised to reverse what it saw as a rigged result in Belgrade’s municipal elections and staged daily street protests over the past week.

Western countries, wary of burning bridges with Vucic, have been silent in their criticism of the election. The US ambassador to Serbia, Christopher R. Hill, last week called on the country to address “shortcomings” in the electoral system, but emphasized that “the US government looks forward to continuing our cooperation with the Serbian government” and “achieving the best”. fully in the family of Western nations”.

Serbia applied for membership of the European Union in 2009, but its application has been on hold for years. Pressure from the West on Vucic to choose sides has been increasing since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February last year.

Vucic condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine but refused to join European sanctions against Russia and showed only modest interest in settling a long-running dispute over the status of Kosovo. Mostly populated by ethnic Albanians, Kosovo broke off relations with Serbia after a NATO bombing of Belgrade and other cities in 1999 left many pro-European Serbs deeply suspicious of the West’s intentions.

Hostilities between Serbia and the West have slowly eased. The West blamed Kosovo, not Vucic, for the escalation of tensions following an outbreak of violence in predominantly Serbian areas of northern Kosovo in September. This stance led European politicians and commentators, who see Vucic as the biggest threat to peace in the Balkans, to accuse him of “weakening” Belgrade.

Instead of giving Vucic more freedom to break away from the stubborn Serbian nationalist forces closely aligned with Russia, as Washington had hoped, the recent elections seem only to have pushed him closer to Moscow.

After Sunday night’s clashes in Belgrade, Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic, a close ally of Vucic, thanked Russian security forces for passing on intelligence suggesting Western involvement in the opposition protests.

“Maybe it won’t be popular with those in the West, but I feel that especially tonight it is important to stand up for Serbia and thank the Russian security services for having this information and sharing it with us,” Brnabic said./The Geopost/