The latest poll about attitudes towards the European Union and foreign relations in Serbia was conducted by Ninamedia.
▪️ 18.1 percent fully supports the ascension to the EU
▪️ 33.6 partially supports it
▪️ 22.9 partially opposes it
▪️ 21.3 completely opposes the ascension to the EU
51.7 for versus 44.2 opposed. Great news, right?
Well, not really. Enter the “joining the EU under Serbian conditions” delusion of the Serbian general public and the corresponding establishment it created, the idea that we will tell the EU what to do while taking its money – Orbanism galore.
When that same poll asked “Who is responsible for the war in Ukraine?”, the respondents answered:
▪️ NATO 31.1%
▪️ US 28.2%
▪️ Ukraine 16.1%
▪️ Russia 8%
▪️ EU 5.3%
Those respondents know that Russia is the aggressor, but are lying to show their “patriotic” credentials or are conformists who go with the flow (although some might actually be stupid enough to believe such nonsense). Those 8 percent are the version of the 11.4 percent “I don’t know” crowd, but with civic courage.
Russia and China are considered indispensable allies for reclaiming the Serbian World, previously known as Greater Serbia – a local revanchist, imperialist project that already failed once in the 1990s during the Milošević era. Wanna support democracy in Serbia? Arm Ukraine.
The region with the least support for EU membership is the supposedly cosmopolitan, urban liberal Serbian capital of Belgrade – 33.5 percent would vote for EU membership, 34.3 percent would vote against. You know that fabulous Belgrade, the tourist trap, and the capital of Balkan coolness, which doesn’t have proper public restrooms, so people relieve themselves in the streets, and it still hasn’t solved its sewage problem.
A large portion of Serbian people already think “we’ve done too much to join the EU and it was humiliating”.
So far:
- remove Milosevic and you will speed up the road to the EU;
- extradite Milosevic and you will speed up the road to the EU;
- extradite all the generals to The Hague and you will speed up the road to the EU;
- extradite Mladic and Karadzic and you will speed up the road to the EU;
- melt down the tanks and weapons and you will speed up the road to the EU;
- sell off all resources and wealth and you will accelerate the path to the EU;
- liquidate domestic banks and you will accelerate the path to the EU;
- sign the SAA and you will accelerate the path to the EU;
- allow gay pride parades and you will accelerate the path to the EU;
- dismantle (“reform”) schools and courts and you will accelerate the path to the EU;
- set borders on Jarinja and Brnjak and you will accelerate the path to the EU;
- sign the Brussels agreement and you will accelerate the path to the EU;
- destroy all Serbian institutions in northern Kosovo and you will accelerate the path to the EU;
- recognize “Kosovo” and you will accelerate the path to the EU;
- sign the IPAP agreement and you will accelerate the path to the EU;
- bow in Potocari and you will speed up the path to the EU;
- allow Western NGOs to work and you will speed up the path to the EU;
- bring in slave-owning companies and you will speed up the path to the EU;
- sign the Washington Agreement and you will speed up the path to the EU;
- implement the Covid agenda and you will speed up the path to the EU;
- vaccinate the population and carry out vaccine terror and you will accelerate the path to the EU;
- change parts of the Constitution and you will accelerate the path to the EU;
Currently:- vote against Russia in the UN and you will accelerate the path to the EU;
- impose sanctions on Russia and you will accelerate the path to the EU.”
Tomislav Crnogorac
FOR HOW LONG IS THIS GOING TO GO ON?
Such an electorate is a fertile ground for spreading Russian and Chinese narratives, considering how Serbian local beliefs are making people in this country avid consumers of state propaganda coming from authoritarian societies.
Sputnik Serbia is twice as frequently cited in Serbian media as Western media outlets combined. According to a study by Ninamedia Kliping, the share of mentions of the editorial office in Serbian-language media reached 67% in the month of March 2026.
You will get an earful of “people burned alive in the Odessa theater” trope from more literate pro-Russians here. But the motivation itself to defend the Russian actions is motivated by local Serbian reasons.
The Russian propaganda didn’t make Serbian people pro-Russian, it’s the other way around – most of them consume Russian propaganda because it fits the local Serbian dominant ideology.
It influences the policies of the local Serbian media as well.
While the government-affiliated media are simply conduits for the Kremlin’s talking points, the non-government media like N1 and Danas either post non-filtered statements from Russian officials, echoing their narratives, and everyone here is after the piece of the largest audience, the pro-authoritarian one.
So Russia’s string of defeats didn’t sit well with someone. Sometime after the sinking of Moskva, reporting about Ukraine in the opposition media dwindled down. It is most likely that their senior staff just didn’t think that the pro-Russian audience would be “happy” having their perception of Russia as a great military power get shattered.
Serbian people value martial prowess. Many a conservative here was deeply impressed by the Ukrainian gallant defense of their homeland and by their success on the battlefield. It didn’t exactly turn them to a pro-Western stance, but it did turn them away from a pro-Russian one.
A common comment I heard from many of my compatriots after the Russian defeats: “I lost all respect for Russia, I thought they were a great military power.”
Enter the flood of pro-Russia and pro-China pundits, besieging the N1 round the clock. The media outlet got nicknamed Z1 by the non-nationalist Serbian people, deservedly so.
When a pro-EU rally was held on this Saturday in Belgrade (the same day the Belgrade Marathon was taking place), the embarrassingly low turnouts at these pro-EU events in Serbia somehow always manage to get even more cringe with stuff like this argument over the Ukrainian flag being brought.
So when Vula Tsetsi, Co-Chair of the European Green Party, claims that “By continuing to protect its Serbian Progressive Party, the European People’s Party is an accomplice in the dismantling of democracy in Serbia…The European Union must stand with Serbian citizens and civil society defending democracy…The European Union must stop funding a government that is dismantling democracy. EU money is meant to strengthen democratic institutions, not to enable a regime that undermines them,” she, the EGP, and the European Socialists and Democrats are perverting reality, undermining the EU, and strengthening extremism with their short-sighted slings aimed at their European right-wing adversaries.
▪️ The democracy in Serbia was dismantled by the people voting for Vučić and his associates since 1993.
▪️ Financial aid from the EU is financing the civilizational amenities, not the “regime”.
▪️ But such an electorate of ingrates in Serbia doesn’t deserve any financial aid from abroad – if they like Russia so much, stop the aid and let Serbian citizens eat Chinese canopies and pollution – otherwise the European Union might eventually admit into its fold a BRICS Trojan horse that would make Viktor Orban blush.
Serbianism 