The images coming out of Belgrade in recent nights are hauntingly familiar to anyone who remembers the Balkans of the 1990s: smoke-filled boulevards, police lines clashing with furious demonstrators, and the feeling that Serbia once again finds itself at a dangerous crossroads. This time, the protests are not about nationalism or ethnic conflict. Serbian cities have been gripped by days of clashes between anti-government protesters and security forces, as demonstrators accuse authorities of stifling dissent.

Riot police face protesters in Belgrade on Friday night. Photograph: Andrej Čukić/EPA

For nearly eight months, citizens across Serbia have been in the streets. What began as mourning over a collapsed rail station canopy in Novi Sad, a tragedy that killed 16 and was widely blamed on corruption, has grown into a broader movement demanding accountability, fresh elections, and an end to what protesters call the “mafia state.”

The government’s response has been anything but conciliatory. Riot police wielding batons, tear gas, and stun grenades have become a nightly sight. Protesters, many of them students, counter with flares and bottles. But the line between state authority and party loyalists has grown dangerously blurred. Videos circulating on social media show masked men, some with criminal records, charging demonstrators with sticks. Many Serbs believe these are SNS paramilitaries, shock troops for the ruling party. It is little wonder that citizens describe the streets as a battlefield between unarmed protesters and the machinery of a state that no longer recognizes its own people as legitimate dissenters.

President Vucic, facing the largest demonstrations since his rise to power, has defaulted to a familiar playbook: claim that the unrest is foreign-sponsored. In speeches, he has darkly hinted at outside forces bent on destabilizing Serbia, though he offers no evidence. His government’s media ecosystem obliges, painting demonstrators as “terrorists” and pawns of the European Union. The irony is not lost: a president who claims to steer Serbia toward Brussels now suggests that Europe itself is orchestrating his downfall.

Yet on the ground, the reality is far less theatrical and far more dangerous. These are not well-funded color revolutions or EU-sponsored plots. The driving force is ordinary frustration, students who demand fair elections, teachers who want decent wages, citizens who are exhausted by corruption and media manipulation. The demand is simple: free and fair elections before 2027, not three years from now, not under the suffocating watch of a one-party state.

Among Vucic’s most potent claims is that the demonstrations are being fueled by outside forces, namely the European Union. Government-aligned media have amplified the idea that Brussels is covertly sponsoring student groups and civic assemblies in an effort to weaken Serbia’s sovereignty and topple the ruling SNS. Officials point to the sophistication of the protest networks, the slickness of their communication, and the timing of rallies coinciding with key EU discussions on enlargement as supposed proof of foreign orchestration. While no evidence has been produced, the narrative resonates with segments of the population already skeptical of the West, allowing the regime to portray protesters not as angry citizens but as instruments of foreign meddling.

The EU’s role is delicate. Officials in Brussels are wary of fueling Vucic’s narrative of foreign interference, but silence carries its own risk. Serbian civil society already feels abandoned, seeing Western leaders shake hands with Vucic while turning a blind eye to democratic backsliding. The question is whether Europe will play mediator or bystander.

For Vucic, the strategy is clear: escalate the rhetoric, escalate the arrests, and bet on fatigue. In his words, there will be “no negotiations with terrorists.” For the protest movement, the message is equally stark: there is no turning back. Organizers say this is no longer about minor reforms or symbolic concessions,  this is about legitimacy itself. Serbia’s government, they argue, has forfeited it.

The comparison to 2000, when Slobodan Milosevic was brought down by the Bulldozer Revolution, hangs heavy over these protests. Back then, it was a bulldozer charging a television station that broke the spell of authoritarian power. Today, there is no bulldozer, only waves of young demonstrators, their faces lit by smartphone screens and clouds of tear gas.

The stakes are enormous. Serbia remains formally committed to EU accession but also nurtures deep ties with Russia and China, a balancing act that has allowed Vucic to play East against West. A government collapse now could alter not just Serbia’s trajectory but the wider region’s.

The question for Serbia’s leaders is whether they truly believe that branding their own youth as “terrorists” and unleashing violence on peaceful crowds is a sustainable model for governance. And the question for Europe is whether it will again watch Serbia slide into authoritarian twilight while muttering about “stability.”

The crowds in Belgrade and Novi Sad already know their answer. “This is not a moment for withdrawal,” the movement declared after Saturday’s massive rally. They may be outnumbered, out-armed, and outflanked, but as Serbia’s history shows, even the strongest regimes can collapse overnight when patience finally runs dry.

By I, Constantin