Eleven months of protests, marked by anti-Western illiberal hysteria, are finally paying off for the Serbian student and civic protesters – the most popular foreign leader in Serbia has decided to put in (pun not intended) a good word for them.

Russian President Vladimir Putin addressed the plenary session of the 22nd annual meeting of the International Discussion Club “Valdai” in Sochi. This year’s theme is “Polycentric World: A User’s Guide”. Speaking about the protests in Serbia, Putin said “that the young people who attend the protests are patriots and that a dialogue should be held with them”.

“They are trying to destabilize the situation in Serbia through the youth. The young people who attend the protests are patriots, there should be a dialogue with them, which Vučić is trying to do. The forces pushing them to the streets want the Serbian people to suffer even more,” Putin said, adding that he “agrees with the assessment that the West is trying to forcefully change the government in Serbia.”

“Colored revolutions do not lead to anything good; we should stay within the framework of constitutional norms.”

He also said that they should never forget the sufferings the Serbian people went through, before, during, and after the First and Second World Wars.

“Those who push young people to the streets want the Serbian people to continue to suffer, even though they don’t talk about it publicly,” warned the Russian leader.

But that, as he concluded, is “Serbia’s internal matter, not Russia’s”, and stated that he has a “perfectly good relationship” with President Vučić.

Tomorrow marks the 25th anniversary of the fall of Slobodan Milošević’s autocratic government, which brought ruin to both Serbia and the former Yugoslavia.

As a sign of appreciation for Putin’s praise, this momentous occasion will be celebrated in Belgrade by a protest in support of Palestine in front of the US and Israeli embassies, “the very core of the occupation of our country [Serbia]”, as the organizers, Initiative For Free Palestine, one of the national-bolshevik appendages of the Serbian protest movement put it.

Well, isn’t that precious? A near-perfect ideological union between the Serbian kakistocratic government and the student and civic protesters has been achieved. After all, there is a common Serbian patriotic cry, “Only Unity Saves The Serb!”. Our nation should be akin to the Borg collective, just not as technologically advanced, but thinking and acting in unison for the betterment of the Serbian and Russian World expansionist projects.

What Putin evoked in his speech is a deeply held Serbian belief about a martyr-nation that deserves payback for historic injustices, which is the same ideological excuse that the Nakba myth represents for the Palestinian terrorists.

In the minds of both the government’s and the protesters’ supporters, the ousting of Milošević was The Worst Thing Ever, that “ruined” the economy and military that was “preserved” by supposedly wise, peaceful politics of the 1990s governments in one of which Vučić served as a government minister. The administrations that followed in the 2000s are referred to as “DOSmanlias”, a portmanteau of the word Osmanlija (the Ottoman Turkish conquerors of the Balkans) and DOS, the abbreviation of Demokratska Opozicija Srbije (Democratic Opposition of Serbia), the big-tent coalition that won the elections on September 24th of 2000.

A failed state dreaming of Greatness and Paybacks, looking for validation from mass murderers.