This article originally appeared on VICE Serbia.
On Saturday, after days of mostly verbal fuss over the Serbian parliament’s approval of a law affirming cooperation with NATO (which is really just a legislative confirmation of an almost decade-long agreement), hundreds of ultranationalists and supporters of right-wing movements gathered for an anti-NATO protest in the capital city of Belgrade. We were there, watching them wave Russian flags and proudly carry iconographic photos of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
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The protest was held on the same day that national authorities confirmed the deaths of two Serbian embassy employees who had been allegedly held hostage by Islamic State fighters in Libya before being killed in a US air strike. But this wasn’t the protestors’ focus. They were more disturbed by what they said was a “betrayal” of the Serbian statehood and a slippery slope in which they see their country falling into the hands of “Western masters.” To remedy the problem, they wanted to call on Putin for help.
Serbia is not a NATO member, but protests against the organization aren’t unheard of, even in member countries like the UK. People have marched against the requirements for demilitarization or their opposition to their home country taking NATO-led military action without the general population’s support before. In Serbia, with its turbulent history of relations with both Western countries and NATO—its war planes bombed the country for three months in 1999 for its then-regime’s treatment of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo—these sorts of protests are far from unexpected.
But the protest against NATO “stealing Serbia’s sovereignty,” complete with flamboyant Russian flags, pompous photos of Putin, and a march toward the Russian embassy in Belgrade, separates Serbia from other opponents of the military machine. We don’t want NATO boots on our soil, but apparently Putin’s are fine?
– Aleksandra Nikšić
