Almost half of Serbia’s citizens side with Russia: what reasons do they give?

Should Serbia be forced out, a greater number of citizens side with Russia than with the West – nearly half of citizens (47 percent) choose Russia, while about a third choose the West (32 percent) and 21 percent are unsure.

This, among other things, was shown by the latest research (for the period July-October) conducted by the researchers of the organization „Novi treci put“ (Dragoslav Rašeta, Miljan Mladenović, Mijat Kostić, Dimitrije Milić and Lana Radnić) within the project “Raising Awareness about Foreign Authoritarian Influence” which is implemented with the support of the National Endowment For Democracy (NED).

Half of the respondents choose the side of Russia because “Serbia should never be on the side of the West”.

Respondents who chose the option of alignment with the West as a reason most often mentioned that “Serbia is largely economically dependent on the West” and much less often political alignment with Western politics or culture.

Political, cultural and anti-Western sentiments dominate among respondents who chose Russia.

When it comes to responsibility for the war in Ukraine, the results of this (third) survey are almost identical to those of previous surveys. The West is seen as the main culprit for the war by 68% of respondents, Russia is seen as the culprit by 27% of respondents, while the share of those who identified Ukraine is only 4%.

These results are, as said, also compatible with the citizens’ opinion on who is Serbia’s most important political partner. Although citizens have slightly more balanced answers to this question, most of them (45%) consider it to be Russia, 29% see the European Union as the main political partner, 24% consider China to be Serbia’s most important partner, and only 1.6% see the United States.

On the other hand, when asked who Serbia’s most important trading partner is, three quarters of respondents mentioned the European Union, only 16% China and 9% Russia.

When citizens are asked on whom Serbia should rely economically in the future, the percentages are not much different – 57% would rely on the European Union, 25% on China, 17% on Russia and only 1% on the USA.

When it comes to Serbia’s foreign policy in relation to the previously mentioned international actors, there is a reserve of citizens towards more decisive foreign policy turns.

70% of respondents are against any sanctions against Russia, while only 15% are in favour of sanctions coordinated with the European Union.

Euroscepticism is on the rise compared to the previous survey, this time’s poll shows, as are attitudes towards a hypothetical NATO accession.

On NATO, citizens have much more polarising views (mostly negative), while on the European Union a significant number of respondents (around a third) are in the likely yes or likely no zone.

If the referendum on Serbia’s EU accession were held tomorrow, 27% of respondents would definitely vote YES, 18% would probably vote YES, 15% would probably vote NO and 40% would definitely vote NO.

For NATO accession, eight percent of respondents would definitely vote FOR, five percent would probably vote FOR, 16 percent would probably vote AGAINST and 71 percent would definitely vote AGAINST.

THE DOMINANT PRO-RUSSIAN NARRATIVE IN THE MEDIA

As part of the research, „Novi treci put“ conducted media monitoring of 15 popular news portals in Serbia (Alo.rs, B92.net, Blic.rs, Danas.rs, Informer. rs, Novosti.rs, Mondo. rs, Kurir.rs, RTS.rs, SrbijaDanas.com, rs.n1info.com, Nova.rs, Espreso.co.rs, Objektiv.rs and Telegraf.rs) between 1 July and 31 August.
On average, the most widely read media in Serbia were and remain mostly pro-Russian and anti-Western regarding the war in Ukraine and the economic consequences of the conflict. Anti-Western sentiment is stronger than pro-Russian sentiment in the domestic media, while Vladimir Putin personally generates significantly more negative articles than the Russian state.

The domestic media have completely ignored the economic effects of sanctions and the problem of inflation in Russia, and have often emphasised the consequences of these phenomena in the European Union and, above all, in Germany.

In this area, energy is highlighted as Russia’s main strength and Germany’s main weakness.

The respondents half feel inflation and consider it a major problem and that this phenomenon will lead to a lower standard of living next year.

Authoritarian countries were also portrayed positively in the media during this period (Russia, China, Belarus), while democratic countries were portrayed negatively (USA, UK, Germany and EU members, and again in this period also France)

The views of the respondents are significantly in line with the dominant narratives and sentiments in the media.

As in the previous two months, China is most often presented as an emerging power that can compete with the US in all areas. On the other hand, Western countries have received almost constant negative representation in almost all areas, where energy has been a new attractive topic for attacks on Western countries.

In terms of world leaders, Serbian respondents gave the highest scores to Chinese and Russian Presidents Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban (all three 4.4 on a scale of 7).

The lowest scores were given to Joseph Biden, Volodymyr Zelensky, Ursula von der Leyen, Liz Truss and Jens Stoltenberg.

Among countries and alliances, the highest average scores were given to Russia (4.8), China (4.6), Hungary (4.6), NATO (1.7), the United States (2) and the United Kingdom – (2)./Danas/