Serbia faces the fire as students march on Belgrade

By Aoife Gallagher · Reporting from Dublin · October 22, 2026

As students march on Belgrade against an autocratic regime, Aleksandar Vučić faces a democratic reckoning that exposes the true limits of entrenched strongman rule.

The iron grip of a tired strongman

Power in the Balkans has a familiar, heavy scent. It smells of stale tobacco in smoke-filled headquarters. State television transmitters hum through the night, broadcasting fear manufactured in the dark. For 12 years, Aleksandar Vučić has mastered this state machinery. His Serbian Progressive Party has held sway for 14 years.

Men who build states on patronage forget a basic truth. Small nations on the European periphery survive on public trust and clear rules, not oligarchic whims. Transparency International ranks Serbia as the most corrupt country in Europe outside Belarus and Russia. When corruption hollows out those rules, the periphery fights back.

The anatomy of an electoral autocracy

This weekend, that fight reaches the ballot box. As reported by The Guardian, a student protest movement has gripped Serbia for two years. The group is now trying to take power under the banner “Serbia or Mafia?”

The slogan is not hyperbole. It accuses a system that weaponises public resources and meets dissent with violence. The rot deepened with the concrete canopy collapse at Novi Sad railway station on 1 November 2024, which killed 16 people. Not a single official has been held accountable for that tragedy. When students held a vigil for the victims, a ruling party mob attacked them. This mirrors the tragic mechanics of Euromaidan, where consolidated power structures used violent dispersal to suppress democratic dissent.

The ruling party’s toolbox grows more desperate by the day. As detailed by the Daily Maverick, masked officers abducted activist Marko Marjanovic in Belgrade. They held him in solitary confinement in a police basement. Police beat Marjanovic during anti-government protests. In Valjevo, police beat architect Dusan Radovic during a demonstration. Radovic recounted how officers surrounded him, kicked him, and stepped on his head. A forensic report by Dr. Djordje Alempijevic found that 25 people were badly beaten there. The report concluded the injuries showed an organized pattern of police brutality and torture.

Physical violence is only one arm of state control. The SHARE Foundation reported that 14 people were targeted with advanced spyware. Movement member Jelena Kontic received an Apple notification that Pegasus spyware compromised her phone, a finding Citizen Lab confirmed. Kontic noted that operators gained access to her entire life, tracking her sleep and daily routines.

Meanwhile, state-run media maintains a monopoly on information. A survey by the Centre for Research, Transparency and Accountability found that 69% of television airtime went to the ruling majority. The Slavko Curuvija Foundation reports repeated verbal attacks by Vučić on journalists. Reporters Without Borders now ranks Serbia 104th in press freedom, the lowest in its history.

Defenders of the regime argue that Vučić guarantees regional stability in the Western Balkans. They claim his mandates reflect a conservative electorate that fears chaos. Western capitals eager for transactional calm have long accepted this argument. But the record shatters that defense. Stability built on wiretapping opponents, abusing state assets, and intimidating candidates is a ticking time bomb. As CRTA programme director Raša Nedeljkov observed, Serbia has become an electoral autocracy where only ruling parties win. Yet the homogeneous control Vučić once enjoyed is no longer secure against an unorthodox political actor.

The march toward the ballot box

Resistance to this autocracy has taken to the roads. As reported by Anadolu Agency, citizens marched from Sabac, Valjevo, Gornji Milanovac, Novi Sad, and Zajecar to Belgrade. Columns from eastern Serbia walked for days, covering approximately 240 kilometers despite exhaustion and injury. Thousands lined Belgrade streets to greet them, creating momentum unseen in decades.

This dynamic shares every core mechanism of the 1996-1997 protests in Serbia. In that era, student mobilization against fraud and autocratic rule created a critical mass. It threatened the regime's grip on power. Today's generation is testing whether an entrenched autocrat can survive public revulsion.

The international community is taking note. U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen led a bipartisan statement from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Senators Roger Wicker, Dick Durbin, Chuck Grassley, Chris Murphy, Joni Ernst, and Thom Tillis joined her. The senators called for free and fair conditions, citing reports of wiretapping and voter intimidation.

Yet domestic pressure remains the true engine of change. Dragan Popovic of the Center for Practical Politics noted that pro-democratic forces have never been this well organized. The Student List is fielding 250 candidates, running neck and neck with the ruling party in polls. Media studies professor Jelena Kleut captured the national mood. She noted a strong feeling of now or never among citizens who have felt the regime's power firsthand.

Serbia stands at the precipice of a democratic reckoning. The courage of marching students and beaten activists now confronts a cornered strongman's apparatus of fear. European and Atlantic institutions claiming to value stability must look closely at what is happening in Belgrade. They must stand unequivocally with the citizens reclaiming their republic, not with an autocrat clinging to power.

Serbia faces the fire as students march on Belgrade

The iron grip of a tired strongman

The anatomy of an electoral autocracy

The march toward the ballot box

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