European Western Balkans reports that the WeBalkans project published annual opinion polls on the perception of the European Union in the Western Balkans.

Serbia:
▪️ 28% of citizens have a positive image of the EU
▪️ 38% of citizens have a neutral image of the EU
▪️ 32% have a negative view

On the other hand, in Serbia, trust in Russia is at 58%, while trust in China is 54.5%.

Among the student supporters, the European Union is still blamed for being too lenient to Vučić. Here’s Doroteja Antić, a young activist from Novi Sad who has been living in exile in Zagreb for over a year after being charged in Serbia in March last year with undermining the constitutional order for participating in organizing protests against the government. “The EU has been quite mild in its reactions, and I believe that this is also because it is in some way convenient for it that Vučić is in power in Serbia. If this were not the case, the reaction to the events in Serbia would have been harsher,” concludes Antic, who finds it difficult to imagine that someone even more radical and more anti-European and anti-Croatian could come to power in Serbia after Vučić“, she said, speaking for Jutarnji.

So why in the world did she ask for asylum in Croatia, an EU member?

The self-radicalized Serbian nationalist movements, the ruling Progressives, the student protestors, and the minor alt-right parties in Serbia all sing the same tune – EU bad, China/Russia awesome, clinging on to their national frustration of unattained Greatness, stolen from them by the machinations of the Collective West, the neighboring countries, and the supposed treasonous fifth column residing in Serbia.

This is especially tragic when one considers the fate of the student movement – outside Belgrade urbanites, the student ticket didn’t manage to gain any popularity. The movement is now on life support of inertia and the stubbornness of the opposition media, but it has zero traction among the weirdly conservative Serbian electorate that seems quite happy with Progressive’s variant of the alt-right that is being offered.

But someone will try to capitalize on what’s left of the pro-EU sentiment in the country. Four Serbian centrist parties – Serbia Center (SRCE), the Movement of Free Citizens (PSG), the Party of Freedom and Justice (SSP), and the Solidarity movement – formed a pro-European coalition, open for other political actors to join.

Following the dissolution of the EU5 with the Green-Left Front (ZLF) going solo and pledging support to the student ticket, and with the tragicomic remnants of the Democratic Party (DS) tweeting themselves into a laughingstock, it is the next iteration of the much-maligned moderate, pro-EU politics of Serbia.

The front faces of the movement comprise Dragan Djilas and Marinika Tepić (SSP), Goran Ješić (Solidarity), Pavle Grbović (PSG), and Zdravko Ponoš (SRCE), a retired general and a former Chief of Staff of the Serbian armed forces.

The first three are opposition heavyweights that both the ruling coalition and the student movement tried to politically eliminate, mostly by launching vomit-inducing smear campaigns.

The silver linings of the failed student protests and the surrounding mainstream alt-right/far-right cacophony are:
▪️ Even in Serbia, pro-Europeanism can’t be erased or beaten into submission
▪️ Troll parties and trying to garner protest votes don’t work
▪️ Serbian parochial, revanchist nationalism didn’t manage to rejuvenate itself by creating the student ticket – the diehard conservatives, pro-Russian/pro-China and anti-systemic voters are stuck with the Progressives, bon appétit

As for the Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić, he said the country’s next presidential election will be held no earlier than late December 2026 and no later than early February 2027.

Well, why rush, with his chief opponents tearing themselves apart by sheer stupidity?

Serbian student movement is the kind of protest that the ruling Serbian coalition could only dream of – a vicious carbon copy of the ruling Progressives chasing away every possible ally they have, and whose chief target is non-nationalists.

Scandals of the people associated with the student ticket do not come consequence-free, as illustrated by the latest racist outburst from notable student supporters like Jasmina Paunović that ended up costing an outspoken conspiracy theorist and media personality, Dejan Lučić, on whose show she appeared and made the controversial remarks, his Zepter advertising.

There were consequences for Snežana Paunović as well. She has been declared persona non grata in Kosovo for saying she would have ethnically cleansed the ethnic Albanians in 1998.

Kosovo Internal Affairs Minister Xhelal Svecla said in a Facebook post that he signed documents declaring Paunović persona non grata “with a permanent ban on entering or transit”.

With opponents like that, the Serbian government can take it easy and pace its moves at its own leisure. On the other hand, the same kind of nonsense coming from the ruling parties, like Snežana Paunović’s statement that she would ethnically cleanse Kosovo if she were in Milošević’s place cannot possibly hurt the standing of either her party (Socialist Party of Serbia) or their senior partners from the Progressives, because that is what their constituency genuinely believes and desires – it’s their “values”.

Vučić never attacks the values of his electorate.

Voters want Orthodox Christian relics brought to Belgrade for a public display? Done.

They want more Chinese and Russian cooperation and weapons to be bought and paraded around? Done.

They want more Serbian victimhood narratives? Done.

Populists be popular, especially with both Chinese and Russian governments firmly in Vučić’s camp.

Russian ambassador to Serbia, Botsan-Kharchenko: “The EU aims to remove Aleksandar Vučić. I remain absolutely convinced that these protests are organized and supported from outside”.

The Russian FSB came in support of Vučić during the March 15th, 2025, alleged sonic cannon incident, which concluded that an acoustic device, or “sound cannon”, was not utilized during the student-led protest in Belgrade.

Russia’s popularity among the Serbian populace is counterintuitive to anyone who doesn’t understand Serbian internal political discourse and dominant ambitions and deeply held beliefs. One would think that since the only people coming out in open support of the Serbian government – the Russians – would lose in popularity.

Yes, Serbia is filled with pro-Russia fanatics, because Russia (and China) are considered indispensable allies in reclaiming the Serbian World (previously known as Greater Serbia), and because of the ideological and cultural closeness of the dominant political discourse in Serbia and Russia:
▪️ human and civil rights are a Western invention to undermine our national identity
▪️ revanchism and “historical injustices” narrative
▪️ might makes right mentality in which strongmen and autocracy are preferable to democracy

“Have you ever seen an expensive Persian carpet woven with gold, but it only has one hole? That hole in the European Union, that will be us!”, back in 2007, the then deputy president of the Serbian Radical Party, Tomislav Nikolić, Aleksandar Vučić’s party comrade for many years, said.

And there it is, right on the map of the continent, because we voted for such a policy.

True to the pictured slogan, the stubborn pro-student crowd still engages in further attempts of manipulation. A recent CRTA poll:

▪️ Student Ticket 44.9%
▪️ ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) 35.7%
▪️ Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) 3.8%

No other party would cross the electoral threshold, according to the survey.

Sure, and I’m Michelle Pfeiffer’s body double.

Such polls and opinion pieces are a dime a dozen in Serbia, pushing the line that the only acceptable political options here are all these Ministries of Ethnic Cleansings and their associated oligarchies and public figures. No centrism allowed, let alone a different model of society.

It’s projections of wishful thinkings, while the results of past elections speak otherwise – the ruling coalition is gradually losing ground to what we here call the pro-EU, not to alt-right and protest vote parties. Forcing pro-EU parties to leave politics and pledge allegiance to students has managed to fail, because no one in their right minds will commit a political seppuku just because a very loud commentariat keeps screaming “Traitors, traitors!” at them for four decades. Also, it’s funny how no one ever asks the loons from the opposition right wing to retire.

Guess they are patriotic enough to keep them around, so they can entertain us with their ideas about replacing healthcare with Tesla’s magical time machine therapy and that they can lend additional high-pitched voices to the yodeling that Kosovo is the heart of Serbia and all that jazz.

The recently leaked internal opinion polls that the ruling coalition used for its propaganda purposes suggest that students are pumped out and nowhere near any victory. The reactions from the student supporters about it seem to confirm it.

The part of the electorate that wants nationalism already has the ruling coalition.

The pro-EU folks, however, don’t need a cuter, more hip replacement in the form of Lompars and other visitors from planet Nestor. The non-authoritarian crowd won’t touch the student radicals with a ten-foot pole. But keep in mind that even among the pro-EU folks in Serbia, there is a common notion of joining the EU under our terms, as in just getting the money and privileges, without having any rules applied to Serbia, like a mutated, even worse version of Orbanism.