Tuesday’s smoke bombs in Serbia’s parliament marked an escalation in the country’s fundamental political crisis. Inevitably, the turmultous scenes between deputies that saw three members of parliament injured, gave rise to conspiracy theories. One can’t help get paranoid when thinking about the situation.
Members of a national parliament throwing smoke bombs at each other, opposition deputies throwing eggs at representatives of the government faction, deputies going at each other in a fistfight – Tuesday’s session of Serbia’s National Assembly in Beograd was something to behold.
Just watch this video by the Bosnian news show Face TV.
Three members of parliament were injured, all members of Serbia’s ruling party SNS, all women. This includes one who suffered a stroke when she was hit by a smoke bomb in the back of her neck. Videos show that a member of her own party had tried to throw the device back towards to ranks of the opposition.
Add to that that the President of the National Assembly, Ana Brnabić, called the opposition members „terrorists“ and accused them of acting on behalf of Kosovo’s controversial Prime Minister Albin Kurti.
It’s safe to say that SNS and the liberal opposition parties responsible for the chaos, Zeleni Levi Front (ZLF) and the New Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS) aren’t crazy about each other, and that’s just part of Serbia’s fundamental political crisis.
Mass Protests Have Dominated Political Life for Three Months
For three months now, mass protests led by students have dominated public spaces and political life in the country. The protests started over the collapse of the canopy of the train station of Serbia’s second biggest city, Novi Sad. The debris killed 15 people. The station had just been freshly renovated and been re-opened with a bang.
Several companies involved in the construction have close ties to SNS.
To cut long matters short, what many think of as an obvious example of widespread corruption in Serbia – and deadly at that – has lead literally hundreds of thousands of people to take to the streets in cities, towns, and even villages in the entire country for three months now.
This is what Tuesday’s parliament session ties into.
It was the first for months, and the first since the cabinet announced its resignation more than a month ago. Hence, it was the first session in which the National Assembly could take note of the government stepping down. In Serbia, this is necessary for the resignation to take effect.
From this point on, the government was on what’s called a technical mandate. It is supposed to run the ministries until a new government is formed, but not to introduce bills to parliament unless specifically asked to. Yet Brnabić asked the now resigned ministers to speak on behalf of the bills that were being introduced.
In protest, some opposition parties like the Democratic Party DS – not to be confused with its spin off New Democratic Party of Serbia DSS – boycotted Tuesday’s session. ZLF and DSS decided to have some fun. Not just, it should be said, inside the National Assembly but also in front of it.
Several activists threw eggs at the building. Many of them had the names of SNS MPs or government members on them, including the abbreviation AV, the common shorthand for Aleksandar Vučić, Serbia’s President.
Later on, thousands of Belgradians and students joined the protest, most of them unaware of eggs having been thrown at the building.
The students, who lead the country’s mass protests, have made it a point to rally peacefully and not give police an excuse to crack down on them.
Police were nowhere to be seen in front of the parliament building, and that during a much anticipated session in the midst of mass protests.
What Theories Some People Propose
All of this inevitably gave rise to conspiracy theories – not much helped by the fact that each side involved tried to use the situation to its advantage.
The opposition parties responsible for the chaos said they had been driven to it by what some of them call Ana Brnabić’s cold coup d’etat. She had been instrumentalizing the National Assembly on behalf of her party SNS and broken the rules, they said, decrying what they call 13 years of institutionalized violence under the rule of SNS.
The government party tried to paint this as an attempt to destabilize the country, and perhaps take over power by illegal means. Which is much what they have been saying ever since the mass protests became to big for them to control.
President Vučić repeatedly called the protests „color revolutions“ – like the revolutions that toppled the Ukraine’s and Georgia’s governments in the mid 2000’s. The mass protests ending in these revolutions had been openly supported by Western governments, and activists had been advised by the informal Serbian NGO Otpor – which had in part orchestrated the ousting of Yugoslavia’s/Serbia’s dictator Slobodan Milošević in October 2000.
On several occasions, Vučić had publicly announced he was just writing a book how he had defeated the color revolution. It was going to sell tens of millions of copies worldwide, Vučić seemed optimistic. It should be noted that generally, modesty is not considered his greatest virtue.
There were other voices as well.
Barely minutes after the first footage of smoke bombs in parliament went on air, Twitter/X-users showed themselves convinced that SNS or the Serbian intelligence agency BIA had orchestrated the escalation in order to discredit the opposition and the students, who are leading the mass protests. „Whatever sympathy they have built up with their peaceful rallies in the past three months is now gone“, more than one said – although few people actually seem to blame this on the students.
(They themselves were busy trying to avoid being appropriated by SNS who said that with the smoke bombs and all, the opposition had shown itself to not care about the students at all, and that only SNS was fulfilling their demands.)
The least charitable interpretation is that orchestrating the chaos, they had finally found an excuse to crack down on the protest movement – which the government had largely shied away from, fearing public backlash. If, so the conspiracy theorists claimed, Tuesday’s incidents could be successfully portraited as an attempted coup d’etat, many people would back any measures to restore order at any price.
That Vučić and other SNS officials have repeatedly said that they’d restore order if the protests radicalized does little to discredit this theory.
Others think this was orchestrated to drive a wedge between the students and the hundreds of thousands of Serbians protesting for change on the one side and the opposition parties on the other.
The students have repeatedly rejected attempts by ZLF and other opposition parties to spearhead the protests and say they don’t care who initiates the necessary changes such as government branches and agencies acting according to the law and ending corruption.
From Russia With Love
Then you occasionally have theories that the Russians are really behind it all. Surprisingly, this comes a lot from people who show sympathy for SNS. Aleksandar Vučić famously has relatively good ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Serbia is one of the few countries in Europe that hasn’t issued sanctions against the Russian government after Russia started its war of aggression against the Ukraine three years ago.
Now, IF the Russians were behind it all, the question would arise to what end. Force their semi-ally Vučić to let police and army loose on the protesters, with the probable outcry by EU governments forcing him to inch a bit closer to Mother Russia? Hope to oust him, who’s much of a friend and ally, hoping for someone more malleable to take his place? It’s hard to imagine anyone being friendlier to Russia than Vučić given the position Serbia is in, as the country very much needs to maintain some degree of closeness to the EU.
(Hungary’s Viktor Orban comes to mind, but heading a country’s government already in the EU, he doesn’t need all that much from them anymore. Serbia is not a EU member.)
Destabilize Serbia? And then what exactly?
It isn’t as though Russian intelligence and diplomacy weren’t meddling enough on the Balkans. They particularly back Milorad Dodik, the nationalist leader of Republika Srpska, one of two of Bosnia’s largely autonomous states. Dodik has massively escalated tensions in Bosnia in the past weeks, threatening with secession if he didn’t get his way (again.) Having friendly relations with neighboring Serbia hitherto has very much been a part of the Russian strategy of destabilizing the Balkans. An unstable Serbia wouldn’t exactly help.
But then again, Russian intelligence is known for its elaborate schemes and long games. Who knows?
I certainly don’t, and I think it highly implausible. But I’m not a spy, and what I know about intelligence – or think I know – I know from TV documentaries and such.
No Evidence For Any Theories
Needless to say that no conspiracy theorist has provided any evidence in the stricter sense of the word.
Not that conspiracy theorists generally do, but overall they usually throw enough bones to gives things a whiff of plausibility.
What serves as the base line here is that clearly, the row in parliament must have been planned.
Smoke bombs and eggs don’t get into a National Assembly building on their own. Throwing them isn’t just a random and impulsive act, either. Even though one usually does that in a somewhat agitated state, it’s a deliberate and premeditated act.
An act, it should be said, ZLF readily admits to.
But, see above, quite a few people claim they have somehow been made or tricked into doing it.
Vulin Made Me Paranoid For A Minute
And then you see footage of one of Serbia’s more remarkable political survivalists, Aleksandar Vulin. Today, he is the country’s Deputy Prime Minister – or, more accurately, acting DPM as of Tuesday.
As smoke bombs whizz through the air, vuvuzelas render everyone half deaf, people duck and everything erupts in chaos, Vulin stands tall, seemingly unafraid. He smiles. Or jeers, depending on one’s perspective.
Whatever one else one thinks of the man – and there is a lot to think else – he seems to have guts.
It is this scene that made me paranoid for a second.
That very much has to do with Vulin’s biography.
Vulin, head of the so called Socialist Movement, has been in and out of cabinet posts – mainly in – for the past decade or so. Among other thigs, he was Minister of Defence and Minister of the Interior (Home Minister or Secretary of the Interior respectively), until his splinter party lost their parliament seats at the general elections of 2022.
From 2022 until the end of 2023, he was head of Serbia’s intelligence agency BIA.
There are many ways in which his remarkable calmness during the general chaos of this scene could be interpreted.
That the former director of BIA was thinking „everything is going to plan“ is one of them.
I must admit, it briefly crossed my mind.
The Balkans can make you paranoid. In this case, it’s Serbia. A bit more about that later.
Say of Vulin what you will, he’s a keen political observer and analyst. A power broker, many say is not beyond dirty tricks. And certainly one quick to spot an opportunity when it arises.
That this parliamentary session would escalate somehow was by no means a secret. By at least bending the rules in SNS‘ favor, the National Assembly’s President Ana Brnabić had laid a trap for the opposition, and they walked right into it, Serbian politologist Cvijetin Milovijević says in an interview with DW.
Just no one had anticipated how much.
It may very well be that Vulin thought in those moments „You fools, you are ruining everything for yourselves, and are playing into our hands“, running through his mind what spins he could put on events.
There are, of course, less charitable interpretations of his behavior that don’t have anything to do with conspiracy theories. I won’t mention them. I have no way of knowing what he was thinking or feeling and particularly why. And these other interpretations are not really political.
Where Were The Police?
Of course, there also is the question where police were.
In just about every democratic country, police would have been guarding the parliament building during a session – let alone one as controversial as this one.
This particularly after last week opposition activists and angry citizens tried to rush two city halls – and police very much were there, preventing them from forcefully entering the buildings. (Read more about that here.)
The students leading the countrywide protests had nothing to do with these incidents.
And yet, in front of Beograd’s parliament, they were nowhere to be seen.
Again, there are many interpretations for this. It should be said that with very few exceptions, police very much have kept in the background during protests in the past few months. So probably no need to make too much out of it. Particularly not as police did park around the building.
But I get why some people detect a pattern here that leads them to imagine a conspiracy behind it.
I just think that pattern isn’t there.
Why Conspiracy Theories Are So Popular In the Region
Be that as it may, it’s also no surprise that these theories emerge in Serbia.
The Balkans are generally very fertile ground for conspiracy theories. Serbia is no exception.
In this respect, a Balkan kafana is like an analogue version of Twitter/X. You will almost inevitably run into someone who will randomly tell you about his pet theory.
From how the CIA orchestrated the breakup of Yugoslavia, to how the Serbian army is keeping the Serbian airforce from getting its fair share of glory for shooting down a US stealth bomber during NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 to how Beograd’s police murder homeless people, and how Tito made sure Albania got fucked up after WW II – I’ve heard them all. All of them are BS, but they make for great entertainment.
It’s not all that surprising either.
People are experiencing obvious and omnipresent corruption, they see government agencies incapable of doing their jobs, building inspections not detecting fatal construction errors like in Novi Sad in November, or somehow not noticing that a closed down quarry is still operating, which led to the deaths of almost 20 people in Donja Jablanica in Hercegovina in October.
Not to mention Bosnia’s most infamous two murder cases – the murders of David Dragičević from Banja Luka and of Dženan Memić from Sarajevo – who have not been solved to date.
People remember how they were promised lands of milk and honey once Socialism was done away with. A promise which for most never materialized. They remember how communal housing was privatized – and cheap -, driving up rents. They remember public transport falling into shambles after the end of Yugoslavia, in spite of being told the opposite.
Most, of course, still remember the war that followed Yugoslavia’s breakup, and how they were told they had to defend their ethnicity from the other ethnicities, or to help doing so, and how that erupted into slaughters, mass rapes and genocide, and in the case of Bosnia produced a largely dysfunctional country whose political system keeps nationalists in control.
They know how the costs of public building projects have a habit of exceeding original projections several times over, and many know how they have to bribe a doctor or a nurse to get any treatment at all in a health insurance system that is supposed to cover necessary medical expenses.
It is not quite surprising that by far most people in the region deeply mistrust politics.
This has a somewhat paradox outcome.
People don’t trust anybody. So they’ll believe everybody everything.
Every time someone tells you this politician or this government official is corrupt, you’ll believe it. You’ve seen this sort of thing happen enough yourself. And buying into conspiracy theories helps you make sense of the apparent chaos around you, and gives you the illusion of being somehow in control of it – or at least of understanding what’s happening.
For an outside observer like me who spends a lot of time talking to people from the region – I live in a very Balkan neighborhood – and who tries to follow events on the Balkans, and who spends his vacations there, it’s sometimes hard not to go down those rabbit holes.
There are enough real conspiracies going on there, too.
Title photo: Screenshot from RTS’s coverage of the plenary session of Serbia’s National Assembly on Tuesday.
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