BELGRADE (Reuters) – Serbia’s deputy prime minister followed up on a meeting with Russia’s spy chief in Moscow by accusing Western intelligence agencies on Friday of trying to destabilise the country by backing months of anti-government protests.
In a statement after seeing Sergei Naryshkin, director of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), deputy premier Aleksandar Vulin said Western powers were plotting to topple Serbia’s government, which has long had good ties with Moscow.
“Western intelligence services are attempting to stage a ‘colour revolution’ and destabilise the Republic of Serbia,” Vulin’s office said, referring to a 2014 pro-European street uprising in Ukraine that ousted a pro-Russian president there.
Tens of thousands of students, backed by teachers, farmers and workers, have maintained daily protests across Serbia since last November, when 15 people died in a roof collapse at a train station in the northern city of Novi Sad.
The protests have grown into the biggest threat yet to President Aleksandar Vucic’s decade-long grip on power as many Serbs blame the tragedy on corruption within the government.
Vulin, a staunchly pro-Russian politician, previously served as the head of Serbia’s Security and Information Agency (BIA), as well as interior and defence minister.
He heads the Movement of Socialists, a minor part of Serbia’s ruling coalition loyal to the populist Vucic.
In 2023, the United States sanctioned Vulin for helping Moscow in what it called “malign” Russian activities, and having links to an arms dealer and a drug trafficking ring, prompting his resignation from BIA.
Vulin maintains close ties with Russian intelligence agencies. In 2024 he was decorated by both President Vladimir Putin and Alexander Bortnikov, the head of the Federal Security Service (FSB).
Vulin’s statement also said U.S. sanctions against Serbia’s NIS oil industry, majority owned by Russia’s Gazprom, were also a part of a Western plot.
“The sanctions against NIS are part of a hybrid war … to overthrow President Vucic and the legally elected government,” it said, without elaborating further.
Belgrade is balancing between its aspirations to join the European Union and its close relations with Russia, the Serbs’ traditional major power ally.
Although Belgrade has repeatedly condemned Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, it has so far refused to join international sanctions against Moscow.
To join the EU, Serbia would first have to root out state graft and widespread organised crime, as well as align its foreign policies with those of the bloc.
(Reporting by Aleksandar Vasovic; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
