Forbes Serbia reported that Rio Sava Exploration, the Serbian subsidiary of Rio Tinto, is under new management, now staffed by people of Serbian ethnicity. After placing the Jadar lithium project in care and maintenance last year, the international mining giant still hasn’t given up on it.
Forbes writes that
Rio Sava’s financial report for last year shows continued loss generation. But also reducing operations in accordance with the announced way of functioning (even though the official decision to move to the care and maintenance phase was officially made only in November 2025).
In 2025, the company recorded a net loss of six billion dinars, or 51.5 million euros. And it is 21% less than the previous year.
However, there are several signals in the financial documents that the company still has hope for the continuation of the Jadar project.
First, the parent company is said to have provided continued financial support and approved $28 million in July last year. Those funds were not withdrawn on the last day of last year, so they were still available. It is added that Rio Sava has a written confirmation that they will be financed for at least 12 months from the approval of the financial statements, which suggests that it is not only 2026, but also the first half of 2027, considering that this financial statement was approved recently, on June 30 to be exact. And the management expects that, in case of need, additional funds will be provided to meet obligations.
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It is also added that Rio Tinto made the decision to move to the maintenance phase due to “changes in the dynamics of obtaining the necessary permits”, as well as ” not leaving the Republic of Serbia“ .
The report states that Rio Sava and Rio Tinto Group are “considering the possibilities with all interested parties for the further realization of this first-class opportunity in accordance with the highest environmental standards, while considering all available legal options.”
On the other hand, N1 reports that “the Serbian environmental movement Marš sa Drine (Get off the Drina) announced on Tuesday that it will sue the European Commission (EC) at the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) alongside several European organizations. The legal action follows the Commission’s rejection of a Request for Internal Review, which had challenged the designation of the Jadar lithium project as a ‘strategic project.'”
This is yet another lawfare case by Serbian society, aimed at what Serbian dominant public opinion considers to be Western enemies out to get us. A good example of such failed tactics was the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling in a 2010 advisory opinion that Kosovo’s 2008 unilateral declaration of independence did not violate international law, a decision lambasted by Serbian politicians, media, and opinion makers as a ploy by the court to rule in favor of Kosovo on a technicality.
It follows a recent case of an additional anti-lithium hysteria attempt by an article in BIRN/Spiegel dubbed “Lithium Before Democracy: A Serbian Strongman and His German Shadow“, naming Jörg Heeskens, an employee of GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit), Germany’s main development agency, owned by the German Federal Government, who has been working as an international advisor in Serbia since 2009, claiming that “a mountain of documents obtained by BIRN/Der Spiegel show just how closely Heeskens has worked with Vucic on a deeply unpopular lithium mining project, exposing what critics say is German complicity in the president’s subversion of democracy.”
Serbian more liberal opposition commentariat, however, has perceived this text as yet another anti-European pamphlet, aimed at preserving the paranoid, nationalist ideology espoused by both most visible polit-tribes here.
Serbianism 