Amid ongoing student protests, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić has relied on the infiltration of pro-Russo-Serbian, anti-Western national-revisionist GONGO groups to delegitimize the students protests. As known pro-Russian agents of influence surrounded Dijana Hrka, the mother of Stefan Hrka who was killed in the 2024 Novi Sad canopy collapse, she became involved in leading openly racist chants such as “Aco Šiptar!” and “Kosovo is the heart of Serbia!”, which were widely embraced by sections of the protesters:
In front of Andreas von Beckerath, the Head of the Delegation of the EU in Serbia, President Vučić further employed another GONGO-style tactic by amplifying the case of Croatian journalist Domagoj Margetić (1974), a figure long associated with spreading anti-Western disinformation and various outlandish claims presented as being “against” the Serbian president.
Ultimately, the central pro-Russian and anti-Western narrative promoted by President Vučić remains his refusal to accept Serbia’s international obligations regarding the status of Kosovo and to acknowledge Serbian responsibility for atrocities committed during the 1990s. Since not a single opposition group within the current protest movement has dared to confront this narrative, Serbian society remains stuck in a state of limbo, facing uncertain and troubling times ahead.