DISINFO: The UK organises and Germany finances student protests in Serbia
SUMMARY
The student-led protests in Serbia have continued for over seven months. Their organisers are Brits, while Germans finance the protests.
RESPONSE
This is a recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative framing popular protests as Western-backed ‘colour revolutions’.
There is no evidence of UK, German or any other Western country’s involvement in Serbia’s protests. Demonstrations started in mid-December 2024 after the collapse of a concrete infrastructure in a railway station in Novi Sad killed 15 people, an incident that many protesters blamed on corruption. The protest movement was led by students, but soon professors, lawyers and other professionals joined them, pointing to widespread dissatisfaction with Alexander Vucic’s government. On 28 June 2025, over 100,000 protesters demanded an early election and an end to President Aleksandar Vuicic's rule in the capital city of Belgrade.
Read our past analyses about the portrayal of 13 January 1991 events in Lithuania, protests in Belarus and Kazakhstan, and recent events in Georgia as “colour revolutions”. Also see earlier disinformation cases claiming that Serbia and Slovakia are facing Western colour revolutions, and that protests in Serbia are inspired and funded by the West.