Serbia’s Student Movement Offers Hope in Dark Times
Student protests in Serbia have challenged an authoritarian government and its sell-off of public assets to multinationals. Far from just a liberal or pro-European movement, it is challenging the ties between Serbian and international capital.
Students and protesters participating in a major demonstration against the government in Belgrade, Serbia, on March 15, 2025. (Filip Stevanovic / Anadolu via Getty Images)
In the week leading up to a major protest in Belgrade this past Saturday, Donald Trump Jr made his appearance in the Serbian capital. President Aleksandar Vučić hosted him at his residence on Andrićev Venac, named after Yugoslavia’s most celebrated writer and Nobel laureate, Ivo Andrić. With considerably less literary talent but a remarkable gift for political fiction, Vučić gestured toward the Belgrade Waterfront, a luxury development on the river Sava synonymous with corruption, presenting it as a symbol of progress. Then, pointing toward the protesters, he described them as obstacles to that progress.
Still, Trump Jr must have known — however little it may have mattered to him — that his host has faced months of opposition from the country’s brightest young minds and most thoughtful citizens. Operating outside the institutional system — because in a country where elections have been rigged for nearly fifteen years, no other option remains — Serbian students have conducted a modern form of door-to-door campaigning, walking from village to village and town to town.
This campaign reached its peak on Saturday, when around half a million protesters gathered in Belgrade, according to estimates. The atmosphere was magnificent — everywhere, except around the national parliament and the presidencial building, where Vučić had stationed his criminals and hooligans, poised to attack at any moment. The gathering, was, nonetheless, violently disrupted in the twelfth minute of a planned fifteen-minute silence for the victims of the Novi Sad railway station roof canopy collapse — an incident last November that killed fifteen people in the country’s second city — by an attack with a weapon that many suspect was a sonic cannon.
The student movement gained momentum after the tragic event in Novi Sad. It began when students from the Faculty of Dramatic Arts (FDU) organized a peaceful protest in front of their faculty. The protest escalated when they were attacked and beaten by hooligans dressed in black clothes, with hats and hoodies. This act of violence sparked a wave of protests, leading to the blockade of faculties across all four Serbian universities, one after another.
After that, peaceful protesters across the country, mostly students but also other citizens, stood up in support of the four student demands, which include, among others, accountability for the assault on students in front of the FDU and transparency and responsibility regarding the reconstruction of the railway station in Novi Sad and the death of fifteen people.
The connection between the hooligans — who, even after the initial attack on the FDU students, continued to assault peaceful citizens almost daily during protests across cities and towns in Serbia — and government-sponsored criminal groups was as undeniable as the negligence and corruption tied to the Novi Sad train station disaster. The station had been reconstructed shortly before the incident by Chinese contractors, under the supervision of one Hungarian and one French company — raising serious questions about the integrity of the work and the pervasive influence of cronyism. Responsibility, in Serbia’s political ecosystem, almost certainly reaches the top, where an entrenched oligarchy profits from every major project, whether state-funded or foreign-backed.
Against Authoritarians
But the Serbian student movement is not merely resisting autocratic, corrupt, and criminal rule. It stands against a broader trend — one that did not begin in Serbia and is far from new. Across the globe, even established liberal democracies — from the United States to Europe — have shown a disturbing tendency to slide (further) toward oligarchy and authoritarianism. For that reason, one of the most significant student movements in the twenty-first century has mostly remained alone.
The movement is composed of young people whose youthful energy contrasts with their sophisticated strategy and discipline — a level of organization that would impress even the most established political movements worldwide. But their struggle goes beyond domestic politics. Their biggest challenge is navigating a geopolitical moment that works almost entirely in favor of Vučić and his oligarchic network.
Vučić came to power in 2012, a time of global economic turmoil but also hope — from grassroots movements in the United States to progressive stirrings in Mediterranean Europe, including Greece and Spain, and the Arab Spring and Gezi Park protests in Turkey. Serbia, however, missed that progressive wave, much as it did in the 1990s under Slobodan Milošević. Instead, it embraced a reactionary course.
Today the world itself seems to have taken a regressive turn. Some call it “Trumpization,” but the phenomenon is much broader and more complex than that. From the United States to Russia, from Hungary to Israel, from China to Turkey, authoritarianism and political instability have become defining global forces.
And yet, in this hostile climate, Serbian students have organized through direct democratic assemblies, nonviolent resistance, and remarkable persistence. They have become a healing force within Serbian society, inspiring other citizens to rise up and organize themselves into citizen assemblies. Paradoxically, at a time when glimmers of hope are way scarcer than they were in 2012, Serbian students are fueling a movement whose slogan — “Pump it up” — reflects their effort to produce light in a darkening world.
However, that light of resistance is poorly welcomed beyond Serbia’s borders, despite the fact that international media finally began covering the issue after half a million people took to the streets in Belgrade last Saturday. The United States and European officials, let alone Russian or Chinese, continue to support Vučić — either through indifference or direct backing of his regime. This situation has placed an overwhelming burden on the students, who now find themselves in the role of David standing against a global Goliath.
Why the silence — or even complicity — from both the West and the East? The answer lies in the interests of the global powers. From Washington to Moscow, from Berlin to Beijing, economic and strategic priorities converge in the Balkans — particularly in Serbia. Systemic change of the kind the students are demanding would disrupt these plans. On the periphery of the global economy, major powers seek comprador elites — local leaders who will serve foreign interests at the expense of their own people. In return, these elites are rewarded with a share of the profits — and protection when democratic uprisings emerge at home.
Vučić sits comfortably at the center of this geopolitical balancing act. He has handed Serbia’s oil industry to the Russians, the Belgrade Waterfront to Arab investors, the national airport to the French, and infrastructure projects to the Chinese and Hungarians. He hopes to secure lithium rights — with the potential for catastrophic environmental consequences — for the Germans’ green energy transition. And to the Americans, especially the Trump administration, Vučić stands ready to offer whatever they ask, much more than luxury hotels in Belgrade’s city center, already promised to Trump and Jared Kushner. If the Gaza Strip “riviera” project fails, it wouldn’t be surprising if Vučić offered up Serbia instead. “We don’t have a sea,” he might say, “but we can build one.”
European Doubts
Serbian students, however, are defying geopolitical expectations. Their movement rejects the standard binary of pro-Russian or pro-American alignment. Unlike protests in Georgia or Ukraine, there are no European Union flags at Serbian demonstrations. The values of democracy, justice, and freedom driving the students simply no longer reside within the EU — or even in many established democracies worldwide.
One protest banner reads, “We will remember who remained silent.” While directed primarily at Serbia’s domestic elite, the message also resonates internationally. The silence of global powers — whether strategic or complicit — will be remembered.
Meanwhile, Trump Jr conveyed his father’s greetings to Vučić — and likely his support as well. After all, French president Emmanuel Macron and German chancellor Olaf Scholz extended their backing to Vučić even personally, last summer, when he faced mass protests over lithium mining in western Serbia.
If Serbian students succeed — if they manage to overthrow an entrenched autocracy and lay the foundation for a more just system — they will have done so largely on their own. In that sense, this is not a “color revolution,” pushed or financed from abroad, as the government often portrays it — quite the opposite. The fact that the students are left alone, even abandoned, does not, however, necessarily have to be bad news. They are authentic and not mere instruments in someone else’s hands. The chances of success are therefore much lower — but if success comes, it could be fundamentally different from the aftermath of Milošević’s fall.
This means that Serbia has a chance to rebuild its society on the foundations of solidarity and cooperation, rather than predatory free-market policies and ruthless competition. Furthermore, the fall of one autocrat and his comprador oligarchy might not simply pave the way for the rise of another autocrat — one who promises to “save the poor” while making them double slaves: to global financial interests and to domestic autocratic and/or oligarchic rule. Such an outcome would make them one of the most significant student movements in the world since 1968 — standing alongside the likes of Chile’s recent mobilization for constitutional reform.
As Andrić said: “If people knew how little intelligence governs the world, they would die of fear.” These students know — and they may feel fear, but they continue to push forward as if they don’t.