The British Empire demanded the overthrow of Serbia President Aleksandar Vucic through an editorial in Financial Times, entitled “Time To Stop Indulging Serbia’s Authoritarian President” and signed by FT’s editorial board, on August 18. The editorial was a signal to the so-called “student protests” to go all-out for the final phase of the Color Revolution in Belgrade.
“The EU and Britain have indulged him for too long,” the editorial said. “Realpolitik has reflected a desire not to see Serbia slip into Russia’s orbit. But this hands-off approach is no longer tenable. Vučić has to be pushed to be more accountable and hold genuinely fair elections; this is anyway essential for any hope of EU membership. The alternative is that Serbia will slide down the path that Georgia has regrettably taken, becoming a phoney democracy over which the EU has no influence and about whose excesses it can do no more than issue statements of protest. America seems to have left the Balkan pitch for now. But the U.K. and the EU have not. They should act and use their economic leverage. If they do not and Serbia heads further down the authoritarian path, it will be not just Vučić but also his gaze-averting Western backers who are to blame.”
The editorial accused Vucic of being ambivalent in his relationship with the EU and equivocal with both Russia and China, as well as being soft on Serbian nationalist tendencies. “He has had cordial relations with Moscow without being so pally as to infuriate the EU and the U.S.; he has turned a blind eye to the sale of Serbian arms to Ukraine. He has wooed Beijing for billions of dollars of investment in industry and infrastructure.”
FT then gives credibility to the allegations of corruption pushed by the “student” protest, and supports demands for an “independent investigation” into the Nov. 1, 2024 collapse of the train station canopy in Novi Sad. It was that tragedy that was seized upon as the pretext for beginning the protests, even though there was, and is, an ongoing judiciary investigation.
As the Russian ambassador in Belgrade has recently remarked, the West wants to replace Vucic with a weak politician. In a past interview with EIR, independent researcher Chiara Nalli has documented the role of EU and U.S.-financed NGOs in the protests, which she forecast would escalate.
