Stradner: Vucic will polarize North Macedonia through the church and the “Serbian world”, China makes a security investment in Serbia

Ivana Stradner, a researcher at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, who is also familiar with developments and politics in the Western Balkans, has pointed out the danger posed to the region and the West by the authoritarian policies pursued by Serbia with Aleksandar Vučić at the helm.

“Serbia’s authoritarian leader Vucic is strengthening his relations with the Chinese dictator Xi and leaving Russia out of the equation. How far can he go? And why does the EU tolerate his appeasing bully games?” In this topic in the European Resilience Initiative Center podcast, Stradner analyzed Vucic’s game with the West, China and Russia.

Stradner said Vucic is becoming a more authoritarian leader by the day and is showing many signs of what he really is. “He is also an ideological leader,” Stradner added.

She says that while there is no strong opposition in Serbia, the West believes it should support Vučić and work with what they have, not the government they want. Stradner says that Vucic is a good politician who dictates the environment in the media, based on his experience during the Milosevic regime, where he was propaganda minister.

“There is no completely free media in Serbia. “He used the information space to manipulate the information field,” Stradner said, citing as an example some media reports in Serbia before Russia attacked Ukraine. “Propaganda media in Serbia claimed that it was Ukraine that had attacked Russia” .

Stradner asks: If Serbia really wants to integrate into the European Union, why doesn’t it use the media space to prepare people for this step?

Ivana Stradner has sounded the alarm that Serbia will try to repeat what it did in Montenegro with the new leadership in North Macedonia, using the same methods.

“They are using the “Serbian world” and the Orthodox Church to polarize and destabilize society. A very similar strategy will spread in North Macedonia. We have learned the lesson from Montenegro, but I am worried that people will not pay the same attention to North Macedonia. When it comes to escalation and crises, he has two areas in the region, one is Kosovo and the other is Bosnia and Herzegovina, and he is pursuing a strategy between the two,” she said.

In Kosovo, Stradner says that Vucic understands very well that he needs to destabilize the frozen conflict. She cites the instigated protests in northern Kosovo, in which KFOR soldiers were injured, and then the attack in Banjska as examples.

“He wants to escalate and then say that he can defuse crises.” The situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina is also very similar to his satellites like Milorad Dodik,” says Stradner.

Stradner said that Serbia’s relations with China were suitable for an authoritarian leader like Vučić and that China wanted to gain a foothold in Europe with Hungary and Serbia.

“The Chinese head of state has just visited Serbia. I am not surprised, because Vucic is playing this game with Russia against the West and will now build another pillar in China.” Vucic needs China to survive and China needs ground in Europe through Hungary and Serbia. This is not only an economic investment, but also a security investment. Let me give you a concrete example. “China has already done some security work with Serbia by sending FK3, which are defense systems, a surveillance technology that is a dream come true for any authoritarian,” Stradner told /The Geopost/.