Serbian police shot dead a young man outside the Israeli embassy in Belgrade in the early hours of Wednesday after what the authorities called a “terrorist attack”.
Interior minister Ivica Dacic said the attacker ran at a police officer with two knives while shouting “Allahu Akbar”; the officer suffered a minor knife wound to the face and shot the man.
Dacic said the suspect was a minor and a Serbian citizen who was being monitored by the security services because he was “known to be a supporter of the Islamic State”.
Speaking to reporters outside the embassy, he said an investigation was under way; the security services said the suspect had posted a picture of the Islamic State flag on his Instagram account.
Dacic raised the country’s terrorism threat level to “red alert”, the highest level, which brings stricter security checks and a larger police presence.
Armed security personnel were seen standing guard outside the embassy on Wednesday morning.
Israel’s foreign ministry confirmed in a social media post that no embassy staff were hurt and that the mission was closed when the incident happened.
It is the second attack on the Israeli embassy in Belgrade in less than three years, for in June 2024, a man shot a police officer in the neck with a crossbow.
The officer survived and shot dead the attacker, who was identified as a Serbian man who had converted to Islam.
An unidentified minor wounded a Serbian policeman guarding the Israeli Embassy in Belgrade with a knife before being shot dead during the early morning hours of Wednesday in what Interior Minister Ivica Dacic described to international outlets as a suspected terrorist attack.
In April of last year, dozens of students set off from Serbia, intent on making it to Strasbourg, France on bicycles. The aim of the arduous, 13-day transcontinental journey was simple: to make their voices heard in Europe and beyond.
In their home city of Novi Sad, students had been holding near-daily protests after a deadly roof collapse at the city’s main railway station. As their push for accountability and justice spread across the country, it was met with baton-wielding police, teargas and a political class that branded these young people as traitors.
In April of last year, dozens of students set off from Serbia, intent on making it to Strasbourg, France on bicycles. The aim of the arduous, 13-day transcontinental journey was simple: to make their voices heard in Europe and beyond.
In their home city of Novi Sad, students had been holding near-daily protests after a deadly roof collapse at the city’s main railway station. As their push for accountability and justice spread across the country, it was met with baton-wielding police, teargas and a political class that branded these young people as traitors.
The long-serving leader of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, has conceded defeat, ushering in a seismic political shift after a historic election that pitted the increasingly authoritarian leader against a student-led movement that had spent two years protesting against his government. As news broke that Vučić’s 12 years in power had come to an end, celebrations erupted on the streets of Belgrade and other cities. But how did we get here - and what happens now? The Guardian's Europe live correspondent, Jakub Krupa, explains
“Per molti anni il servizio pubbliconon ha svolto la sua funzione, è rimasto in silenzio, ha chiuso un occhio, ha fornito informazioni di parte e ha riportato i fatti in modo acritico. Non sono state poste le domande giuste o non sono state poste affatto”. Esordisce così il giornalista Goran Eror dell’emittente serba RTV nel discorso in cui la redazione si scusacon i propritelespettatori per il lavoro svolto negli ultimi anni di governo Vucic. “È l’inizio di un percorso per riconquistare la fiducia del pubblico” ha aggiunto prima di cominciare il telegiornale.
Nei giorni scorsi, tra l’altro, alcune persone avevano fatto irruzione nella redazione di Informer, un’altra tv filo-governativa, per dire al direttore di “chiedere scusa ai cittadini” per le “menzogne” raccontate negli anni. Nonostante l’ex presidente serbo Vucic abbia additato i sostenitori della Lista Studentesca come responsabili dell’irruzione, non è chiaro se siano stati effettivamente loro ad aver compiuto l’intrusione nella televisione.
Serbian interior ministry calls incident 'terror attack,' says assailant had Islamic State flag on Instagram account, shouted 'Allahu Akbar' during assault
Aleksandar Vucic’s election defeat has ended more than a decade of political dominance and handed victory to Serbia’s student-led opposition movement. RFE/RL's Balkan Service spoke with Ilija Srdanovic, the top candidate for the Student List party on what comes next for the country.
Supporters of the opposition movement that won Sunday’s election stormed the offices of a pro-government tabloid. Another news outlet apologized for years of “one-sided” coverage.
In an interview with RFE/RL, Ilija Srdanovic, the lead candidate for Serbia's Student List -- which ousted longtime leader Aleksandar Vucic in recent elections -- pledged to pursue EU integration and said Belgrade's stance on sanctions against Russia could be reconsidered through public debate.
Decine di migliaia di persone sono tornate ieri sera dalle 19 per celebrare la vittoria alle elezioni della Studentska Lista in piazza Slavija, nel centro di Belgrado, nella quale il 22 ottobre è stato tenuto il grande comizio elettorale di chiusura e dove la scorsa notte si è festeggiato.
Sul palco un dj ha fatto ballare la folla tra i fuochi d’artificio, mentre un analogo festeggiamento si è svolto anche a Novi Sad, la città universitaria dove è iniziata la protesta studentesca due anni fa.
Alexander Stubb and Jonas Gahr Støre held ‘substantive’ talk with Russian president on peace negotiations, but faced sceptical reactions from some European leaders
Meanwhile, Wes Streeting, the defence secretary, has warned that Russia’s Vladimir Putin is “testing us and testing Nato’s resolve” as he condemned hybrid threats and “state-sponsored terrorism” from Russia.
Streeting repeated his recent warnings that “we have to be ready for a scenario in which the United Kingdom and the Nato alliance finds itself at war with Russia”. He went on:
Not because we want war – we have no quarrel with the Russian people, and we have no desire for war with Russia; Nato is a defensive alliance – but when Putin gives assurances that he has no intentions to provoke a war with Nato, we are reminded of what he said about Ukraine only days before the invasion.
The more ready we are to face against Russia, to defend every inch of Nato territory, the less likely we are to find ourselves in that scenario.
Poland is one of our greatest and certainly our most reliable friend in Europe, and we value and treasure this friendship very much.
Alexander Stubb and Jonas Gahr Støre held ‘substantive’ talk with Russian president on peace negotiations, but faced sceptical reactions from some European leaders
Meanwhile, Wes Streeting, the defence secretary, has warned that Russia’s Vladimir Putin is “testing us and testing Nato’s resolve” as he condemned hybrid threats and “state-sponsored terrorism” from Russia.
Streeting repeated his recent warnings that “we have to be ready for a scenario in which the United Kingdom and the Nato alliance finds itself at war with Russia”. He went on:
Not because we want war – we have no quarrel with the Russian people, and we have no desire for war with Russia; Nato is a defensive alliance – but when Putin gives assurances that he has no intentions to provoke a war with Nato, we are reminded of what he said about Ukraine only days before the invasion.
The more ready we are to face against Russia, to defend every inch of Nato territory, the less likely we are to find ourselves in that scenario.
Poland is one of our greatest and certainly our most reliable friend in Europe, and we value and treasure this friendship very much.
Benjamin Netanyahu is in the fight of his political life. Voters in Israel are heading to the polls on Tuesday to decide an election that could determine whether Netanyahu will remain the country's prime minister (and affect the outcome of the corruption charges against him). But the Israeli election also arrives at a time when voters around the world seem to be rejecting authoritarianism. A student-run movement stunned the world on Sunday when its candidates routed Serbia's long-serving leader, Aleksandar Vučić. That same day, Brazilians beat back a campaign by Flávio Bolsonaro – the son of Jair Bolsonaro, the disgraced former president – in a historic upset. Carter Sherman speaks to Julian Borger, the Guardian’s senior international correspondent, about how these four elections could reshape the political world order in just 10 days, and why the upcoming US midterm elections are the biggest test for global democracy.
La clamorosa vittoria della gioventù serba ricorda alla politica l’esistenza di un bene comune invisibile ma fondamentale: la trasparenza della Pubblica Amministrazione.
E’ noto che il movimento studentesco abbia preso le mosse da un fatto tragico: il crollo della pensilina esterna alla stazione di Novi Sad nel 2024, dove morirono sedici persone. Un fatto che agli occhi e ai cuori della migliore gioventù serba ha rappresentato la manifestazione più tangibile della corruzione sistemica che affligge la Serbia.
La rivolta, che ha avuto il pregio eccezionale di trasformarsi in progetto politico-elettorale alternativo, ha messo al centro una verità spesso marginalizzata nel discorso politico: la democrazia, per realizzare la promessa costituzionale di essere emancipante, deve essere liberata dalla corruzione in tutte le sue declinazioni. Perché la corruzione della Pubblica Amministrazione uccide.
La corruzione non è soltanto mal costume, non è soltanto abuso di potere normalizzato in una società sempre più brutale e feroce che induce a scommettere sulla protezione del “clan” al quale si giura fedeltà, la corruzione infine produce morte, perché al fondo di tutto ciò che non si fa e che invece si sarebbe potuto fare o che si fa male mentre si sarebbe potuto fare meglio ci sono vite spezzate. Quasi sempre peraltro le vite che soccombono sono quelle dei più marginali.
Quale che sia la “faccia” della corruzione, che non sempre prevede la “mazzetta”, perché nella sua forma più subdola e inafferrabile diventa clientelismo, familismo, nepotismo, “giro-giusto”, baronismo, auto promozione spregiudicata di sistemi di relazioni che insieme crescono e insieme cascano, la corruzione uccide.
La possibilità stessa che una democrazia possa attivare politiche adeguate per l’accesso alla casa, alla sanità, al lavoro, alla scuola, alla giustizia, alla sicurezza dipende da una Pubblica Amministrazione trasparente e imparziale.
Chiunque di noi saprebbe fare molteplici esempi di quanta vita è stata sacrificata in Italia a causa della corruzione, quante morti sull’altare “dell’una mano lava l’altra e due mani lavano il viso”. Il contrasto alla corruzione passa certo attraverso precise norme penali, che questo governo ha sabotato a cominciare dall’abolizione del reato di abuso d’ufficio, passa dal rispetto di una Autorità indipendente come l’Anac, che questo governo ha bersagliato di critiche delegittimanti, ma passa soprattutto attraverso una attenzione costante e consapevole che si rifletta nel discorso pubblico dei leader politici che cercano il consenso elettorale.
Non si tratta di burocratizzare ulteriormente i meccanismi di formale prevenzione della corruzione: il rischio infatti è quello di moltiplicare carte col “copia-incolla”, del tutto inutili a modificare la situazione.
Bisognerebbe invece che le forze alternative alle destre meloniane prendessero alcuni impegni concreti come la difesa efficace di chi segnala illeciti nella Pubblica Amministrazione (i cosiddetti whistleblower che invece, e nonostante le norme approvate, vengono spesso isolati e penalizzati), il contrasto alle Slapp (le azioni legati pretestuose contro gli attivisti sociali e i giornalisti), il contrasto alla precarizzazione dei giornalisti (che spesso lavorano in condizioni di grave vulnerabilità), il contrasto alla opaca gestione dei rapporti tra portatori di interessi (lobbisti) e personale politico. Una “agenda per la trasparenza” quanto vale in Italia?
In Serbia ha fatto la differenza, contribuendo a sconfiggere anche l’orrore del nazionalismo più spietato a cui Vucic ha cercato fino all’ultimo di aggrapparsi, beatificando con i funerali di Stato il “macellaio di Srebrenica”.
Binbag-wielding volunteers clear encampment used by thugs to intimidate opponents of deposed government
Student List cleaned up at Serbia’s parliamentary elections. So it was only fitting that the morning after a night of raucous celebrations, the movement’s supporters were gathering, bin bags in hand, at Pioneers Park, opposite the national assembly building in Belgrade.
For the previous 18 months, this small patch of greenery – with its established trees and playground – had been a no-go zone. A pro-government camp known as Ćaciland had taken over the space with convicted criminals living there in white tents, happy to attack journalists, or anyone else who came too close. Police stood by but did nothing to prevent the violence.
I saw a remarkable experiment take shape in Belgrade. Its lessons should be studied by other European countries struggling with unrest
More than a decade ago, the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange told an interviewer in Belgrade that Serbia was “a country where the future happens first”. The phrase circulated widely on Serbian social media in the weeks before Sunday’s election, but in a way that could not have seemed possible 10 years ago. Who would then have imagined that Serbia today could be at the forefront of global democratic change?
The images from Belgrade on Sunday night – people dancing and crying in the streets, while in Novi Sad, the city that sparked the student movement, a flag bearing the image of the convicted war criminal Vojislav Šešelj, which had hung from a building since the 1990s, was torn down – reinforced the feeling that the future had truly arrived.
Aleksandar Matković is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology in Barcelona and a fellow at the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam. He works on environmental history, political economy and the history of Yugoslavia
Brazil is not the only country to have had dramatic election results this weekend. In Serbia, longtime leader Aleksandar Vucic lost a historic election that brought down his government. William Brangham discussed the results with Heather Conley.
Belgrade erupted in celebration on Sunday night as Serbia's Gen Z-led protest movement transformed nearly two years of anti-corruption demonstrations into an electoral victory over the political establishment of former President Aleksandar Vucic, who had held power for 14 years.
Among the crowds was Dijana Hrka, whose 27-year-old
On October 25, an election list formed after two years of student-led protests in Serbia toppled Aleksandar Vučić and the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS). The announcement was met with street celebrations that continued throughout the night, recognizing the outcome as a chance to break with 12 years of the former president’s anti-people policies.
Election turnout surged to almost 70% of registered voters. The Student List secured roughly 53% of the vote and the SNS came in second with close to 39%. The two options are set to be the only forces in parliament except for minority representatives.
“These results have shown that a genuinely homegrown – even if heterogeneous – movement can articulate social discontent with SNS rule, provided it makes a decisive break with the baggage of the pro-Western opposition,” the Party of the Radical Left (PRL) wrote in a reaction on Monday.
The Students List ran on a platform titled “Serbia or the Mafia,” consisting of anti-corruption promises and plans to tackle the political establishment’s capture of the media sector. It also included a call for more transparency in public procurement and recruitment in the public sector. The platform promised to limit import monopolies, lower drug prices, and make healthcare more accessible.
From the Novi Sad canopy collapse to the ballots
Sunday’s results were made possible by months of demonstrations and public assemblies triggered by the canopy collapse in Novi Sad in November 2024. Sixteen people died in the event. In the aftermath, students across the country threw their energy into a campaign demanding accountability for the tragedy.
From the beginning, protesters insisted the Novi Sad disaster was a consequence of the SNS’s way of doing politics, marked by widespread corruption, nepotism, and disregard for the public interest. During his tenure as prime minister and president, Vučić attempted to cast himself as a supporter of multilateralism and a political figure critical of the West, yet his actions exposed this as a more rhetorical than anything else.
These actions included supporting extractive deals with British-Australian mining company Rio Tinto – which the European Union included on its strategic projects list despite risks posed to communities in Jadar and mass mobilizations against the project – as well as the launch of a drone factory in cooperation with Israeli arms producer Elbit Systems. In fact, despite the former SNS leader’s efforts to present him as neutral, Serbia’s involvement in arms trade to Israel has been such to warrant notes of particular concern by UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese.
Locally, Vučić’s rule was marked by violent crackdowns on activists and campaigns, from the most recent student campaigns to Palestine solidarity. There was no substantial reaction to these reports from other European countries or the EU.
Aleksandar Vučić (center) with Bulgarian Prime Minister Rumen Radev and Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama in June 2026. Rama is also facing a major wave of protests demanding his resignation. Source: Aleksandar Vučić/Facebook
On the other hand, while very heterogeneous in character, the student movement aligned itself clearly against the Gaza genocide. Some local groups made solidarity with Palestine a central issue in their mobilizations. They also mobilized against projects associated to US interests, including the redevelopment of the former General Staff complex – a Belgrade landmark damaged in the 1999 NATO bombardment of the city – into a luxury hotel by Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of US President Donald Trump. This project was also brokered while the SNS was in power.
Progressives within Student List face difficult task ahead
The student campaign grew in significance through decentralized plenums and consultations across the country. This approach was not abandoned even during the formation of election lists – leading to a roster of new candidates, previously largely unknown to the public. University staff and other education workers who had supported the mobilization from the early days figured prominently on this list.
The success of the Student List represents an extraordinary achievement, especially considering the movement faced obstructions at every turn. These included police violence and institutional intimidation over the past two years, as well as schedule provisions that jeopardized voting rights in the diaspora.
“The progressive elements within the Student List and the movement now face a difficult task: to resist the forces of the establishment within their own ranks,” the PRL emphasized after the election.
Earlier on, the party and other progressive voices expressed “critical support” for the Student List, recognizing the elements of social justice incorporated in its platform – but also noting aspects belonging to a technocratic vision of governance.
“When it comes to the published program, the measures set out in the ‘Serbia or the Mafia‘ plan are not enough to eradicate the structural injustice that has taken root in Serbia over thirty years of privatization, ‘structural adjustment’ to the Euro-Atlantic regime, and the weakening of public institutions – and their systematic incapacitation from carrying out their mandated functions and protecting the public interest against the arbitrary power of capital,” the PRL stated in September.
Despite such reservations, the hope embedded in the movement surrounding the Student List is clear. The PRL observed: “Beyond the mass politicization of students and the raising of awareness on many key social issues – and despite pressure from ‘opposition’ politicians who would rather keep all these topics quiet […] we consider the following to be progressive developments: the construction of a directly democratic movement that antagonizes both the government and the parliamentary opposition in practice […] open communication and cooperation with trade unions, which gave rise to the first mass protest-based May Day commemoration in many years […] and cooperation with informal labor and professional collectives, which gave rise to a new organization – the Social Front.”
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