Serbia in one of the few European countries that is a candidate to join the European Union. The country has a right-wing government and an inclination towards friendship with Russia. Last week the country had elections that didn’t to have passed fair as they should have, so today we will take a look at Serbia’s bow to the Kremlin.
When the war – or invasion as the Russians tend to call it – in Ukraine started, quite some Russians who don’t support President Putin left the country. The only country they have easy access to in Europe is Serbia, so about 300,000 Russian dissidents have come to live there in the meantime. They have seen the country lose more and more of its democracy, culminating on the 17th of December or ten days ago. On that date Serbia had parliamentary elections. The same party that was already first in the country won again, but according to EU monitors and to the Russian immigrants there were quite some controversions, like vote rigging, so tells us today’s Moscow Times.
Persecution and targeting by Serbian police
Not only that. Many of the fled Russians are facing more and more persecution and targeting by the police in Serbia. See here in the X post and on the Kremlin-critical Russian news website of Meduza.
The news website also tells us that many of the Russian refugees try to make people in Serbia understand what they are opting for by choosing Russia’s side in politics. Russia is unfortunately not a free, democratic nation, but a strongly repressive and autocratic regime where people can’t speak up or protest against government mesures. The Kremlin gets more and more control over the country and now that the same President, Aleksandar Vucic, has “won” the elections again, freedom of speech and of acting will be restricted in a fast pace.
Serbia as a candidate to join the European Union
Protest last Monday repressed with tear gas and pepper spray, when angry protestors broke windows in Belgrade’s town hall. They still continue demonstrating until today.
Many officials in Brussels think practices like votes-buying and more repression shouldn’t happen in a country that wants to join the European Union. Here a short discussion about it in the European Commission. As you can hear and also read here on the website of the EU, High Representative Josep Borrell and his colleagues don’t reject the outcome of the elections in Serbia. They only demand better regulation of elections in the country in the future. So what they actually do, is postpone the entrance of Serbia in the European Union.
I personally think that is somewhat dangerous. As it seems, the Serbian government has already decided that it isn’t interested in joining the EU and is tearing down all democratic institutions in the country. I don’t know how fast that will go, but there is a fair chance that there won’t even be new elections in the future in Serbia if the Vucic administration continues to rule. I can only hope I am exaggerating and hope all will be well just now.
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