Vučić, Putin, color revolutions and apparitions of Nazis

Official Belgrade is playing with fire, gambling with the last shreds of credibility it has left in international relations, and especially in the triangle with Moscow and Brussels. For some, better inexplicable reason, the regime in Serbia believes that it can "pull the nose" of both the Russian and European sides, telling one thing to Putin and his associates, and another to the leaders of the European Union and the leaders of the member states.

Student protests that have been going on for seven months in Serbia, in contacts with senior Russian officials, starting with President Vladimir Putin, are being presented as a "colored revolution" in an extremely negative tone and with accusations of the West for its organization and support.

The same events are being explained to partners in the EU and its member states, in this case behind closed doors and confidentially, as an attempt by the Kremlin to destabilize the government in Belgrade and bring a hardline nationalist and pro-Russian current to the helm of the country.

In the last few months, the official regime rhetoric, amplified through the media and social networks, has become almost identical to the vocabulary used in the Russian Federation. What is striking is the extremely negative context that the leading people in Serbia and their television megaphones and social media bots give to the so-called color revolutions. They use the same definitions, the same qualifications and the same kind of contempt as in Russia.

The aforementioned narrative aims to generate empathy in Moscow, especially in the Kremlin. Let us recall that for Russian President Vladimir Putin, nothing is as disgusting and nasty as "color revolutions". The uncrowned Russian emperor is literally allergic to cheerful, humorous and creative protests, without conspicuous leaders, which demand the establishment of a legal state, liberal democracy, freedom of the media and the guarantee of political and human rights to all categories of the population.

Putin has repeatedly spoken publicly in a very offensive and vulgar manner about "color revolutions", defining them as "a hybrid war of the West against the Russian Federation". After the political turmoil in Kazakhstan in early 2022, Putin firmly stated that he would no longer allow attempts at "color revolutions" not only in Russia, but also in neighboring and friendly countries.

Recall that Putin's key turning point in relations with the West occurred in 2012, when his return to the presidency, after four years as prime minister, was accompanied by massive civil society protests, primarily in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Putin blamed the US and the EU for the uprising of Russian citizens who demanded that the Constitution of the Russian Federation not be tampered with.

Bearing in mind that the months-long protests in Serbia are supported, directly or indirectly, by political forces and parts of society that are under the control of Moscow, as well as that the Kremlin holds part of the media in its hands and that it is not always clear to whom parts of the regime in Belgrade are more loyal, Aleksandar Vučić or Vladimir Putin, the Serbian authorities have intensified the story of "colored revolutions", and in the last few days another campaign close to the Kremlin's heart has been launched: the fight against the Nazis, or rather for denazification.

In this context, the Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Porifirije, also came to the aid of the Serbian President. At a meeting with Putin, the leader of the Serbian Orthodox Church, without any provocation, defined the student protest as a "colored revolution" with the aim of convincing Moscow that Belgrade is on the same side and is exposed to attacks from the same enemy, and that the equation is valid: the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

In the short term, the ruling structure in Belgrade faces a much greater threat from Moscow than from Brussels. The Kremlin has not had a change of government for 25 years, "fouls" are remembered much longer and are not forgiven without a great and good motive. That is why it was extremely necessary for Vučić to "iron out" relations with Putin and eliminate the possibility of Moscow assisting or being neutral in the overthrow of his government.

The progressive government and the media under their control have been glorifying Russia and Vladimir Putin and disavowing the West and the EU for 12 years. The result of this campaign is that Putin is a more popular politician than Vučić in Serbia, and most citizens unmistakably recognize Russian interests and put them ahead of their personal and state interests in Serbia.

This type of subservience to Moscow has entered a new phase through the narrative of "colored revolutions" and the fight against "Nazism", with which official Belgrade wants to show that their Serbs are greater Russians than the Russians, and that everyone else is "Nazi" or a pro-European part of society that needs to be "denazified".

All of the above would have its own logic, albeit a bizarre and Luciferian one, if representatives of the Serbian authorities, both personally and through emissaries, were not to convince leading people in the EU and member states that they are forced to be some kind of "catch-all" because, for God's sake, if they are removed from power, a team of people will come to Belgrade who are "truly" pro-Russia and against Serbia's European integration to the core.

Namely, the story has been being spread to EU partners for some time, of course behind closed doors and in confidential conversations, that only Vučić is the true barrier to Serbia falling under complete Russian influence, and that the Kremlin wants to overthrow the government in Belgrade in order to enthrone the "true" pro-Russian current at the helm of the state, through student protests and demonstrations against lithium mining in Jadro.

A negative circumstance for the progressive government and the accompanying propaganda machinery is the fact that, as baseless as the story is that someone from the West wants to carry out a "colored revolution" in Serbia, the narrative that the Kremlin is considering whether and how they could use the turbulent situation in Serbia to actually bring a harder Russian, or rather anti-Western, line to power in Belgrade is not without foundation.

Belgrade's double game has not cost the regime dearly so far, but it has cost Serbia. It missed the best three and a half years of the EU enlargement process from 2008 to the present and has remained virtually blocked while Montenegro and Albania raced towards EU membership.

Serbian society, traumatized by a decade of sanctions and the experience of isolation during the Milošević-Marković-Šešelj regime - practically the political parents of today's government - perceives only harsh and direct punishments to the ruling regime as a clear warning, not realizing that blocking European integration and leaving Serbia as a hole in the European carpet is the greatest punishment.

No one in Europe wants to punish or discipline Serbia, but if it intends to be apart from the continent it belongs to, apart from its neighbors who surround it, no one will be overly excited if it continues to wage quixotic wars against "colored revolutions" and carry out imaginary "denazification" to prove its loyalty to Vladimir Putin.

The result of the two-faced, some would say hypocritical, Serbian foreign policy is indifference, irrelevance and hand-waving: "Ah, those Serbs, they should be left to wallow in their own mud."