Thirty-thousand Serbians marched in Belgrade on Aug. 10, ostensibly to protest plans to mine lithium in the Jadar region by the large Australian-British Rio Tinto mining consortium. Protesters blocked the bridge on the international Budapest-Thessaloniki highway, as well as the central railway station and the New Belgrade station. Of the 30,000 protesters, 14 were detained for criminal offenses, 3 for administrative offenses, and 2 foreigners for attending the protest near the most important government institutions.
According to AsiaToday.id, President Aleksandar Vucic had said a day before the protests that Moscow had warned Belgrade about a potential coup attempt, and reported that Serbia’s Security Intelligence Agency (BIA) was already acting on leads provided by Russia. Yesterday, Vucic warned that the environmental protests were part of a Western-backed “hybrid war” against his country and vowed to take strong legal action against those who had blocked roads and rail stations.
Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandar Vulin, who had previously served as head of BIA, added that “the lithium protests are not so much about the environment, told RIA Novosti. Their goal is to overthrow the government.” Vulin, who is known to maintain close ties to Russia, charged that “no one wants Serbia to develop, no one in the West wants an independent and strong Serbia.” He added that “the attacks on me, when it was said that we would fight against color revolutions and foreign interference together with Russia, are indicative. What could be more normal than that we, as a small country, ask for help to remain independent, so that a violent change of power does not occur here. … Russia, of course, can help Serbia, just as Serbia can help Russia.”
The danger to Serbia comes from their desire for negotiated settlement of the Ukraine conflict. He explained in the RIA Novosti interview: “Something happens to everyone calling for a peaceful resolution on Ukraine, they get shot at,” citing the attempted assassinations of Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico and former U.S. President Donald Trump. Serbian President “Vucic’s life is in danger from those who want Serbia to stop being neutral, to sanction Russia, to recognize ‘independent Kosovo’ and disavow Republika Srpska in Bosnia-Herzegovina. And they’re not in the east, either.… Peace in Ukraine could have been reached in Istanbul” in 2022. “But that didn’t happen because those making the decisions about peace in Ukraine are not from Ukraine, and wish to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian.”
Vulin’s statement that Serbia is interested in attending the Oct. 22-24 BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia and collaborating with that group, as opposed to the demands on Belgrade from the EU bureaucracy in Brussels, is not surprising. As Sputnik reported, today, he announced that a formal invitation is expected soon. “I would like to participate in the work of the Forum” he said. The BRICS offer a real alternative to the EU. “This organization [BRICS] does not demand anything from Serbia, but can offer more than we ask. And the EU demands everything from us, but I am no longer sure what it offers us. BRICS is our chance and a real alternative. I am very clearly in favor of Serbia considering very carefully all the possibilities of BRICS and the closest possible cooperation with the organization’s member countries,” he concluded.
