European Union and Western intelligence services are carrying out the Maidan, that is, the color revolution in Serbia - representatives of the government have been saying for months, and the pro-regime media have been reporting it. Alleged evidence was also presented by the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) when it accused several independent media in Serbia - including "Vreme" - to carry out this conspiratorial Western feat.
This is the main spin for the domestic propaganda need to delegitimize student protests. However, there is also the other one - that there is actually something behind the protest Rusija. Isn't it a little strange to talk about who he is big boss student rebellion broke the spears of two archenemies? It is completely clear that the government pumps the first spin on the internal plan, but then who pumps the second? And do the Russians really have anything to do with the demonstrations in Serbia?
WHERE ARE THEY FROM IN THIS WHOLE STORY?
In order to understand how the narrative about the Russians as protest organizers was created and what it actually serves, one should start from the first narrative - that the West is behind everything.
The target group of this propaganda is the citizens of Serbia, mostly voters of the ruling party and those who are undecided. As the pro-Russian sentiment in Serbia is increasing and the pro-European sentiment is decreasing in the last decade, this narrative is being used to divert from the topic of protests and students as such and link it to external factors.
The reach of the message that the West is behind the protests does not end here. She sends it to Moscow at the same time and with the same meaning. Namely, the authorities in Belgrade Russia is needed, and the Kremlin would like Serbia, so it is necessary to convince friends from Moscow that the student protests were orchestrated in Brussels, London and Berlin, and that it would not be good for Russian interests in Serbia if they continued.
On the other hand, the authorities in Belgrade also need the West, primarily the European Union. How then to explain to them why the students are protesting and why it is taking so long, while avoiding questions about the actual demands of the protest? So that the regime will spin the narrative that the protests are orchestrated from the outside - and is there a more useful conductor than the Kremlin? To European bureaucrats who are not known for understanding the situation on the ground, this story may sound quite believable, especially when it comes not only from the mouth of the authorities, but also from representatives of the opposition.
The opposition recently joined the spin on the alleged Russian organization of the protest. In one of her statements, the vice-president of the Freedom and Justice Party, Marinika Tepić, expressed her concern that the Serbian Orthodox Church and the Russians are behind the protests. As she said, the scenario reminds her of the change of the Đukanović regime in Montenegro and the riots that significantly contributed to it.
This is not the first time that Moscow has been accused of influencing protests in Serbia. Similar speculations appeared during the corona protests in 2020, when "Blic" published an article on the front page with the title "Is Russia behind the riots in Serbia?", citing that "the Americans claim that". However, it turns out that this is not claimed by any official American sources, but rather by an American portal that devotes a paragraph to the protests in Serbia and the sentence that "many pointed the finger at pro-Russian ultra-right groups" for inciting the riots.
WHO BENEFITS?
At the beginning of the year, the former president of Serbia, Boris Tadić, said that representatives of the Serbian delegation at the Munich Security Conference were trying to "spread information to Western politicians that Russian services and interests are behind the student protests in Serbia." Information that the government was pushing these narratives among the Western community continued to emerge later.
From the point of view of the player, there is a point in using this spin. The benefit for the government is multiple. First, the narrative that the Russians or the Russian services are behind the organization of the protest ignores, that is, pushes into the background the real reasons why the demonstrations broke out. Identical to how it is done through propaganda in the other direction (spin about the "colored revolution" financed by the West) it becomes less important why the protest is being made, because everything is orchestrated from the outside. Then, with this narrative, the students themselves are delegitimized. From the social force that mobilized the most massive civil discontent in the history of Serbia, students become pawns of a play directed at some "higher level", whose demands are neither relevant nor should be heard. In the end, in its constant balancing between East and West, the government in Belgrade is trying to send a message with this spin that it is not as "friendly" with the Kremlin as it might seem.
But what good is it? opposition of this narrative? That is, the part of her that pushes him? Namely, as the students distanced themselves from the burden of the opposition political parties from the beginning of the protest, the opposition never managed to find its own platform for political struggle. Public opinion surveys show that in social perception it is completely marginalized and invisible compared to students. Therefore, by delegitimizing the protests, that is, by trying to present them as the result of "Russian malign influence", certain parts of the opposition want to draw attention to themselves and send a message to Brussels that they are the only alternative option in Serbia.
NATIONALISM AND SYMBOLS
Those who talk about Russian influence on the protests often use as arguments the alleged increase in nationalism, which is reflected in the speeches and symbols (in the form of flags and banners) at the protests - mostly referring to the Vidovdan protest in Belgrade.
German journalist Michael Martens, who deals with the Balkans, he wrote after the protest that "this trend has been looming for some time, but abroad hardly notices it". Adding that "in the student movement, which is still the main driving force of the protests, the supremacy was carried away by Greater Serbian nationalism, reminiscent of the early years of the rule of Serbian warmonger Slobodan Milosevic in the early nineties." The text says that the very list of speakers chosen by the students for the gathering is problematic: "Nationalists and relativizers of war crimes competed in spreading Great Serbian slogans. The presenter chosen by the students was not far behind them."
Martens largely did not understand the students' attempts to unite a wider ideological spectrum of citizens in the Vidovdan protests, i.e. to unite both right- and left-oriented ones. After this protest, the attacks that the student protests were "nationalist" intensified, which was subsequently associated with the pro-Russian right, and then with the Russians. Thus, supporters of this theory, among other things, part of the opposition, cite the flags of "Wagner's Jesus" as examples. It is actually a flag with the image of Jesus Christ in a yellow circle on a red background. This symbol did appear at litias in Belgrade in 2022, as well as litias held in Moscow - however, it is a medieval Orthodox symbol.
That symbol is often worn by members of pro-Russian right-wing organizations, including Serbian Action, but students in the blockade have repeatedly distanced themselves from flags and extremists at protests through their official communication channels.
THEATER OF THE ABSURD
The narrative that the Russians and the Russian services are behind the protest is quite absurd when you take into account the fact that the current Serbian government once signed an agreement on Serbia's observer status in the Russian Defense Alliance (CSTO), that the former minister and former director of the BIA Aleksandar Vulin signed a certain memorandum with the Russians on the joint fight against color revolutions, and that the Russian FSB participated in the investigation into whether a sound cannon was used at the March 15 protest or no.
All the statements of Russian officials since the beginning of the protests, including President Vladimir Putim, point in only one direction - that a "colored revolution" funded by the West is at work in Serbia. Also, the recently discovered network of Serbian and Moldovan citizens under the auspices of the Russian GRU who were trained in protest destabilization techniques in camps across Serbia further supports the thesis of the absurdity of this narrative. Although some of them were eventually arrested, it is hard to believe that the Serbian security services were not aware of the existence of the camps.
In addition, Serbia represents the most significant Russian stronghold in the Balkans in many spheres, including intelligence. Therefore, the Kremlin could hardly find a better option for its activities than the current government in Belgrade.
In the end, unlike the demonstrations of the 90s and the Fifth of October itself - when the entire West turned against Milosevic and the Russians were quite neutral - the current student protests are a reflection of a spontaneous rebellion that has been heating up for months. At the protests, you can see all kinds of flags, citizens of different ideological views, as well as members of different political and activist groups. The student protests are the culmination of dissatisfaction that has been building up for years, and which erupted only when the appropriate social force appeared to mobilize it. Therefore, promoting the narrative that the Russians are behind the protests is nothing more than an attempt to discredit and destroy the meaning of this months-long civil struggle.
