The student-led movement, which began after the Novi Sad rail station disaster in November 2024, is pushing for early elections.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n Published On 23 May 2026<\/span>23 May 2026<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Tens of thousands of people, led by university students, have rallied in the Serbian capital to protest against the government and call for early elections.<\/p>\n The Novi Sad rail station disaster in November 2024, which killed 16 people, sparked anticorruption protests, calling for a transparent investigation, forcing then-Prime Minister Milos Vucevic to resign.<\/p>\n list of 4 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n Serbia\u2019s President Aleksandar Vucic<\/a> later pushed back hard against the protesters.<\/p>\n With students leading the anticorruption movement, the demonstrations have snowballed into a campaign to push Vucic to call early elections.<\/p>\n Vucic said this week that the ballot could be held between September and November this year.<\/p>\n Protesters streamed into a central square in the capital, Belgrade<\/a>, from several directions, many carrying banners and wearing T-shirts inscribed with the \u201cStudents win\u201d motto of the youth movement.<\/p>\n Columns of cars drove into Belgrade from other Serbian towns earlier in the day.<\/p>\n Protester Maja Milas Markovic said students \u201cmanaged to gather us here with their youth and wonderful energy; I really believe that we have [the] right to live normally.\u201d<\/p>\n Serbia\u2019s state railway company cancelled all trains to and from Belgrade on Saturday, in a bid to prevent at least some people from coming from other parts of the Balkan country.<\/p>\n In the evening, Sporadic clashes broke out between protesters and police near the presidency building and outside a park where Vucic\u2019s supporters \u200chave been camping since March last year.<\/p>\n Police fired teargas and stun grenades as they pushed back protesters further down the street. Protesters set fire to bins filled with rubbish.<\/p>\n Before the march, there were concerns of violent conflict between the protesters and Vucic\u2019s loyalists, who are often hooded and masked and who have attacked student protesters in the past.<\/p>\n The protests have \u201chuge support from the public, and that\u2019s because they\u2019re an all-encompassing movement \u2026 against the government,\u201d Tetyana Kekic, a journalist in Belgrade, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n She said the challenge for the protesters is that they do not have a \u201cclear political platform or policies \u2026 and they do not have a leader or a personality which could really challenge the president\u201d.<\/p>\n The Serbian president has faced international scrutiny for his hardline approach towards the demonstrators.<\/p>\n The Council of Europe commissioner for human rights, Michael O\u2019Flaherty, criticised Serbia\u2019s government in a report this week and said he \u201cwill monitor the situation closely\u201d on Saturday.<\/p>\n Serbia is formally seeking entry into the European Union, but it has maintained close ties with Russia and China.<\/p>\n The democratic backsliding under Vucic could cost the country about 1.5 billion euros ($1.8bn) in European Union funding, the EU\u2019s top enlargement official warned last month.<\/p>\n The venue on Saturday is Belgrade\u2019s Slavija Square, the scene of a huge antigovernment protest in March 2025. That rally ended in sudden disruption that experts later said \u2013 and the government denied \u2013 involved the use of a sonic weapon against peaceful demonstrators.<\/p>\n Students now say they plan to challenge Vucic in approaching elections later this year or next, which they hope will oust the right-wing populist government.<\/p>\n Vucic, government officials, and the pro-government media have branded critics as \u201cterrorists\u201d and foreign agents who wish to destroy the country \u2013 rhetoric that has ramped up political polarisation.<\/p>\n The student-led movement, which began after the Novi Sad rail station disaster in November 2024, is pushing for early elections.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":87893,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aktualitet"],"aioseo_notices":[],"magazineBlocksPostFeaturedMedia":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/bisedoshqip.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/reuters_6a11ed3c-1779559740-150x150.jpg","medium":"https:\/\/bisedoshqip.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/reuters_6a11ed3c-1779559740-300x225.jpg","medium_large":"https:\/\/bisedoshqip.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/reuters_6a11ed3c-1779559740-768x576.jpg","large":"https:\/\/bisedoshqip.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/reuters_6a11ed3c-1779559740-1024x768.jpg","1536x1536":"https:\/\/bisedoshqip.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/reuters_6a11ed3c-1779559740-1536x1152.jpg","2048x2048":"https:\/\/bisedoshqip.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/reuters_6a11ed3c-1779559740.jpg","trp-custom-language-flag":"https:\/\/bisedoshqip.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/reuters_6a11ed3c-1779559740-16x12.jpg","colormag-highlighted-post":"https:\/\/bisedoshqip.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/reuters_6a11ed3c-1779559740-392x272.jpg","colormag-featured-post-medium":"https:\/\/bisedoshqip.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/reuters_6a11ed3c-1779559740-390x205.jpg","colormag-featured-post-small":"https:\/\/bisedoshqip.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/reuters_6a11ed3c-1779559740-130x90.jpg","colormag-featured-image":"https:\/\/bisedoshqip.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/reuters_6a11ed3c-1779559740-800x445.jpg","colormag-default-news":"https:\/\/bisedoshqip.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/reuters_6a11ed3c-1779559740-150x150.jpg","colormag-featured-image-large":"https:\/\/bisedoshqip.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/reuters_6a11ed3c-1779559740-1400x600.jpg","colormag-elementor-block-extra-large-thumbnail":"https:\/\/bisedoshqip.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/reuters_6a11ed3c-1779559740-1155x480.jpg","colormag-elementor-grid-large-thumbnail":"https:\/\/bisedoshqip.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/reuters_6a11ed3c-1779559740-600x417.jpg","colormag-elementor-grid-small-thumbnail":"https:\/\/bisedoshqip.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/reuters_6a11ed3c-1779559740-285x450.jpg","colormag-elementor-grid-medium-large-thumbnail":"https:\/\/bisedoshqip.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/reuters_6a11ed3c-1779559740-575x198.jpg"},"magazineBlocksPostAuthor":{"name":"Ioni","avatar":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/4de7d1024908d847fc21ef50fe01465508cd6bac2b59b1c21485c2342bf8bf44?s=96&d=mm&r=g"},"magazineBlocksPostCommentsNumber":"0","magazineBlocksPostExcerpt":"The student-led movement, which began after the Novi Sad rail station disaster in November 2024, is pushing for early 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