He's dragging himself addressed to the British Guardian, after the paper wrote that the president is a "cynic and autocrat".
His answer appeared in the newspaper. However, the Guardian decided not to put him on the pages dealing with international politics or world news. Thus, the president of Serbia found himself on the sixth page, but not of the entire newspaper, but of its weekend supplement, in the "letters from readers" column.
Above his answer is another private opinion about carrots and hot peppers, and this photo describes a festival celebrating the harvest in Great Britain. As the page is dedicated to their readers, the Guardian invites other readers to send them photos or letters, which they could publish here.
Next to Vučić's letter, there is also a letter from a heavy metal player who says that he sometimes listens to black metal, and then wonders how much this genre has a problem with racism.
It is obvious that the Guardian only pro forma published Vučić's letter, and the place where he placed it essentially tells what the editors think about him. The location of the letter actually sends a much heavier message, with an undertone of mockery, and it would probably have been much better for the president and his team if the Guardian had not published them at all.
What did Vučić write?
"The initial demands of the student protests at the end of last year were quickly fulfilled," Vučić wrote to the Guardian. "We launched investigations, released thousands of documents on the renovation of the train station and increased funding for education, and the prime minister resigned, taking responsibility for youth clashes over the issue. Yet the demonstrations continued, shifting the focus from seeking justice to overt political goals: removing the government beyond democratic processes."
A letter of similar content was sent to the Financial Times "During the past nine months, Serbia has faced tens of thousands of undeclared gatherings. What started as student protests turned into smaller blockades led by extremist groups, often marked by vandalism, harassment and clear attempts to cause unrest and violence. The police reacted with maximum restraint in difficult circumstances."
What the Guardian wrote about Vučić
"Autocratic and cynical, Mr. Vučić is a malignant presence in the politics of the Western Balkans," wrote the Guardian in an editorial comment. "Beyond Serbia's borders, he has long nurtured an insidious and destabilizing ethno-nationalist agenda regarding Kosovo and Republika Srpska - the ethnic Serb entity in Bosnia and Herzegovina. At home, he has increasingly become a threat to democracy."
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) found that the parliamentary elections in Serbia last year were marked by media bias and the use of government patronage networks to influence the vote, it added.
"The authoritarian response to the protests - which spread to small towns that are the centers of support for Vučić - contributed to the decline of public trust in the leader who used the power of the state to serve his own political interests," writes the editor of the newspaper, which traditionally supports the left in the UK. "If it wanted to use it, the EU has significant economic leverage it can use. The bloc provides more than 60 percent of foreign direct investment in Serbia and has pledged 1,6 billion euros to Belgrade by 2027, tied to future reforms. But Brussels is reluctant to see the country slide further into Russia's orbit and, as a result, has softened any criticism of Mr. Vučić. For his part, the president played a shrewd geopolitical balancing act, sending arms through third parties to Kiev, as well as Moscow, and giving the EU key access to significant lithium reserves in Serbia."
After the violence of this summer, Mr. Vučić belatedly called for a dialogue with the protesters last week, the commentary added. But what Serbia needs are free and fair elections and a reversal of the authoritarian creep of the past decade, it added.
