By Bob Travica
The following account is based on facts (triangulating the sources whenever possible), plus my own witnessing of the situation in the capital, Belgrade, from March to September 2025.
Background: Another Trigger
The unrest started after the collapse of a reconstructed concrete canopy on the railway station in Serbia’s northern city of Novi Sad on November 1, 2024, which killed 16 people. Grievers included students who soon took the torch of social criticism. The unrest quickly spread to the University in Belgrade and gradually to universities in other cities. Students demanded an investigation into the reconstruction project, alleging corruption of politicians by contractors as the cause of construction malpractice, and eventually the tragic accident.
The canopy reconstruction was a part of a larger railroad project, which included a consortium of foreign and domestic construction companies, foreign oversight, and foreign investors. Officials at several levels were involved on the project owner’s side. Yet, tying the student revolt just to that event would just scratch the surface.
Dissatisfaction with the regime had been brewing through 2023-24. In 2023, there were two unprecedented, murderous mass shootings in Serbia, one in a primary school. The opposition blamed the government for both accidents and targeted a TV network, private yet close to the regime, for allegedly airing inciting, violent content. Street protests with traffic blockages erupted, and the regime responded with snap elections by the end of the year. But the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SPP) prevailed again as it did before in its decade-long rule. From this stance, the canopy accident was a trigger for another outburst of civic disobedience, although this time students took to the torch rather than the opposition to the government.
Relentless Pumping
Countering the winter, the pumping protest grew into a huge, noisy oil rig. It forced the resignation of ministers for construction and for trade. A minister and 12 responsible individuals were indicted on public safety-related charges and irregular execution of construction work. But this didn’t appease protesters. As their ire was directed toward the ruling SPS, the regime made another concession with the resignation of the Prime Minister, a SPP functionary. The protests still continued, while the government went into a forced recess. New demands were raised, such as releasing all the documents for the ill-fated project, and an increase in the budget for higher education.
Protesters, self-named ‘students in blockade’ (their number never determined) occupied university buildings, thus cancelling classes and exams across the country; professors and administration either sided with protesters or just kept quiet. Even lower-level schools followed suit to some extent. Educational staff were still getting paid up until March.
A 16-minute ritual of silent respect giving to Novi Sad victims has been performed in public spaces around the country. Public traffic was blocked on streets and bridges, randomly from the perspective of participants, so that it became tricky to move around cities. Commuters, small businesses, and service providers (ambulances, deliveries) were delayed. Blockades were accompanied by whistling, horn blowing, and inevitable “Pump it!”-screams synched with the rhythm of jumping in place. There were sit-ins around the Belgrade facilities of the state broadcaster RTS, so that employees couldn’t get to work; news programs were disrupted. RTS was attacked for not airing the protest enough. That was the rationale of the protesters. However, RTS was also criticized by the government for a lack of airtime and was split internally. Moreover, some other TV networks showed as being more supportive of the regime than RTS.
In the bigger picture, RTS has been a symbol of government-controlled media since the 1990s, and so it has been a whipping boy for every protest that took place in Serbia to date. Therefore, students didn’t just express dissent peacefully, but attacked the institution. The blockade made one of Belgrade’s main traffic routes defunct for weeks. I stopped by RTS and tried to strike conversation with protesters – unsuccessfully. All I’ve got was whistling, jumping in place, and screams, “Pump it!” in front of me. Not showing the protest gear and the signature jumping behavior, I was probably perceived as an outsider. I had an impression that youngsters’ energy was funneled into some pagan ritual, eons far from the proclaimed democratic goals of the protest.
The equally apparent attack on institutions was the blocking of court houses in Novi Sad, with the demand that protesters indicted for violating public order get released. One such group of indicted persons was caught, through intercepted communications, in plotting to break into RTS buildings and inciting physical violence; they belonged to a new party based in Novi Sad (the core of their program is extreme decentralization resembling American libertarians) (1). Similar blockades appeared in Belgrade and some other cities.
Prominent artists staged free street concerts, exhibitions, and performances in support of the protests. A number of professional unions joined the protests. Theater groups enacted “trial plays” in public squares, symbolically prosecuting and arresting corrupt politicians. Actors followed the final curtain in theatres by raising up student gradebooks and images of bloody hands, a staple sign of the protest.
The largest protests, numbering 100,000 or more participants, took place in Belgrade, Novi Sad, and Kragujevac. The peak was the protest in Belgrade on March 15, 2025, gathering around 300,000 people. Some participants confessed that an expectation of a final countdown for the government was up in the air. But at a crucial moment, at the first signs of violence, students took off their yellow jackets, which meant their pullout from that protest. A general national strike was supposed to commence in a week or so, but it never happened. In April, students continued “pumping” across Serbia and made excursions into the EU (biking to Strasbourg, and a marathon to Brussels, with no obvious benefits for the protest). In May, the protest movement came up with a new demand – early parliamentary elections.
During blockades, the riot police and gendarmerie mostly embodied a wall between protesters and opponents (supporters of SPP, and possibly provocateurs). The government appeared knocked down, and its visible resistance was funneled only via controlled mass media. In mid-April, it began recovering and pricking university blockades via negotiations. Online classes commenced. Still, another large protest happened on June 28 in Belgrade. It was about half the size of the March protest and signaled the end of the first phase. It ended with an announcement that students finished their job and relayed the torch to citizens.
The next phase of protest started the same night, when some protesters physically confronted the riot police and gendarmerie, who blocked access to followers of the ruling party residing in a makeshift camp in central Belgrade. Protesters sought a fight with the campers, organized by the regime to essentially block access to adjacent buildings of top state and city institutions, and to use it for PR purposes as ‘students who want to learn.’ Clashes erupted at several locations in Belgrade, signaling the transition toward a violent phase. The extent of student participation vs. other protesters involved in altercations with law enforcement that night and later is uncertain. Novi Sad, where everything started, continued to be the flash point.
In sum, the protest grew into something like a huge, noisy oil pumping field, developing through a mostly peaceful first phase led by students, and the second violent phase, with a less visible presence of students.
Zigzaging
During the protest, new strategic goals were added, such as a higher education budget, immunity for protesters, and, later, snap parliamentary elections. However, there was another goal, albeit tacit, to knock out the regime via a mass civic unrest and inaugurate a government of experts chosen by students. Although unspoken, it is warranted to conclude, after 10 months of the protest, that overturning the regime has been a true, stable, and indeed the highest goal all along.
The demand for snap elections is particularly interesting
because Serbia’s president offered that earlier in the protest, but he was turned
down. Perhaps protesters hoped to accomplish everything without elections. Indeed,
the first two goals cited above appeared accomplished at the time, and the
government was taken down de facto. So, it looked like the stars were aligned
favorably for protesters. But a question arises now: Is the demand for elections, which the demander
discredits a priori, yet another indication of goal shift, or does it indicate unlikely
political pragmatism or even something else?
How did the citizens make sense of protest goals? A survey released in January by TV network N1, a CNN affiliate sympathetic to protesters, found that citizens saw these as the main causes for the protest: corruption, dysfunctional institutions, deficient rule of law, and, lastly, the Novi Sad accident (2). My own finding from conversations with protesters is based on a small and convenient sample, but consistent: People are protesting for justice. When inquiring about the examples of injustice they experienced, I've also got a consistent answer: injustice didn’t happen to them directly but to “others,” and that “everyone can see that.”
An April survey by the widely cited agency CRTA provides an
indirect answer to protest goals, although with a twist (3). The surveyor asked
about the biggest problems in Serbia and found that the citizens closer to the
opposition and undecided ones pointed to corruption and the current government
as the biggest problems. The twist: citizens closer to the government singled
out students and protests as the biggest problem! Several surveys released in
August show that the ruling party is still much ahead in rankings over
opposition parties (high 40’s percentage points), while students (posing as an
anonymous list) are far behind (below
10%). (4) If nothing, the surveys expose a deeply divided society.
In the report above, I described details of the student protest based on facts sourced and experienced. In the second part, I turn to the characterization of the protest.
Sources cited:
(1) https://pokretslobodnih.rs/politicka-platforma-2024-2027/
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