Colour revolutions

The West is playing with fire in Serbia again

The role of Western “NGOs” is revealed

by Thomas Röper*

(7 March 2025) (CH-S) The extent of destabilisation attempts by Western so-called NGOs in Serbia is alarming. Thomas Röper has researched it in the following article. However, it is only one example of many how Western foundations as well as state and non-governmental organisations try to push through their political ideas contrary to democratic procedures in other states. The fact that Switzerland is also involved in such projects in Serbia in the orbit of USAID and the EU is now coming to light.**

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There is unrest in Serbia, and the Serbian government claims that it is being organised and financed from abroad. What is going on there and who are the driving forces?

Serbia under the government of President Aleksandar Vučić has long been a thorn in the side of the West, because the Serbs have traditionally felt a connection to Russia and the Russians, and Vučić stubbornly refuses to go along with the West’s anti-Russian policy. Before we get to who is directing the current unrest and what triggered it this time, let’s take a look at the West’s attempts to take action against the Serbian government in recent years.

The West’s fight against Vučić

One lever for taking action against the Serbian government is the controversial issue of Kosovo. The fragile status quo was enshrined in the so-called Brussels Agreement, but the Kosovo government repeatedly violates the autonomy of the Serbian minority in Kosovo, as regulated in the agreement. This is done without the EU, under whose auspices the agreement was negotiated, doing anything about it.

At the end of May 2019, the Kosovo government violated the agreement¹ and sent special forces to the Serbian autonomous areas, although this is expressly prohibited by the agreement. The EU remained silent on this. This was repeated in 2021² and 2022,³ bringing the region close to a new war, with the EU and the West supporting Kosovo and ignoring the violations of the agreement.

Such provocations put Serbian President Vučić and his government in a difficult domestic political position because most Serbs do not recognise Kosovo’s independence and demand that the Serbian government guarantee the protection of Serbs in Kosovo.

The West is also financing a pro-Western opposition in Serbia, which, for example, has called for early elections in 2023, which the Serbian government has even agreed. It hoped that an election would bring calm to the country, which the West has been putting great pressure on to join the anti-Russian front, especially since the escalation in Ukraine began.

The elections were held in line with the established pattern, and the pro-Western opposition – with the support of the West, of course – spoke of electoral fraud, and there were protests and attempts to occupy public buildings, entirely in line with the Maidan model.⁴

In the summer of 2024, Western companies signed contracts to mine lithium in the Jadarit region. In July 2024, an EU delegation led by German Chancellor Scholz travelled to Serbia to prepare the deal. The aim is to extract 58,000 tons of lithium per year, which would account for 17 percent of the European lithium market.⁵

Serbian President Vučić hopes that this will attract foreign investment of six billion dollars, which would be the largest foreign investment in Serbia in history and would be a great deal of money for the small and not-too-rich country of about 6.6 million inhabitants.

But there were also protests against the project because the people in the affected region warned of environmental damage caused by lithium mining. In August 2024, there was a showdown,⁶ when demonstrators once again demanded the resignation of the Serbian government and blocked roads in Belgrade.

For the EU, this was a win-win situation, because on the one hand it had secured important lithium deposits, and on the other, NGOs paid for by the EU fuelled the protests against lithium mining in the hope of toppling the Serbian government. Vučić responded:

“They think I’m stupid because they don’t see how “loudly” they are silent in the West, where they should have been pleased about the opening of the mines. No, some people thought they could kill two birds with one stone: first, get rid of Vučić, and second, reserve the right to make decisions about Jadarit.”⁷

The current protests

On 1 November, the canopy of the newly restored train station in the city of Novi Sad collapsed, killing 15 people. Immediately afterwards, anti-government protests began again, this time over allegations of corruption.⁸ According to media reports, the canopy was the only part of the building not to be restored during the restoration.

The demonstrators demanded that the guilty parties be punished and, over time, they began to make four demands: the resignation of Prime Minister Miloš Vučević and the Mayor of Novi Sad, the disclosure of secret agreements in connection with the restoration of the railway station, the immediate arrest of all those responsible, the release of all those arrested during previous protests and control over all infrastructure projects built in the last few decades.

On 28 January, the Serbian Prime Minister bowed to pressure from the demonstrators and announced his resignation. Western media such as Der Spiegel mentioned the fact that the Prime Minister’s statement – that the protests were controlled from abroad – was at best marginal.⁹

President Vučić also stated this on 1 February:

“It is not easy to govern a country and make independent and responsible decisions. I have often said that if you do not obey the orders of foreign powers, if you want to lead your country freely, if you make decisions in the interest of your people and not in the interest of the great powers, sooner or later the moment will come when they try everything to overthrow you. But the problem is not that they want to remove me. The problem is that they want to destroy Serbia. And what we have experienced in the last few months is a direct attempt by foreign secret services to destabilise our country.”¹⁰

So, we must look at whether this is just a mere claim, or whether the Serbian government is right to make these accusations to the West. Therefore, let’s look at the NGOs supporting the protests in Serbia and who is financing and directing them.

Centre for Investigative Journalism

One NGO that supports the protests on its website and on Facebook and other social networks is the so-called Serbian Centre for Investigative Journalism.¹¹ On their website, you can also find out who is financing and thus directing this supposedly independent centre.¹²

They name two organisations. One is the American Global Investigative Journalism Network (GIJN),¹³ whose long list of members is a veritable who’s who of the Western propaganda industry. They include, among others, Bellingcat,¹⁴ correctiv,¹⁵ n-ost¹⁶ and OCCRP (more on this in a moment). The GIJN is financed by the usual suspects among American oligarch foundations,¹⁷ for example by George Soros, whose foundation the GIJN expresses its heartfelt thanks to.

The second network that the centre names as a partner on its website is the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP). The OCCRP was founded in 2006 to expose organised crime and corruption. That sounds reputable, but let’s look at who finances it.

Unsurprisingly, the list of OCCRP’s financiers¹⁸also reads like a who’s who of transatlantists and Western oligarch foundations specialising in regime change and colour revolutions. Among others, the list includes the British, Danish and US State Departments, USAID, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), Rockefeller, the Sigrid Lausen Trust and, of course, George Soros’ Open Society Foundation. I have already reported on the OCCRP in detail in other contexts.¹⁹

When the Serbian government accuses the Centre for Investigative Journalism of being controlled by the West, it is therefore hard to refute.

KRIK

Another Serbian NGO that supports the protests is KRIK,²⁰ which describes itself as the “Crime and Corruption Reporting Network”. It is also strongly supporting the protests against the Serbian government. On its website, KRIK also names the OCCRP as a partner,²¹ as well as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the Open Society Foundations, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Civil Rights Defenders, the Heinrich Böll Foundation of the Green Party and the EU.

USAID is a US government agency whose official task is to open markets and access to natural resources in other countries for US corporations.²² To this end, USAID has an annual budget in the billions to finance “independent media” that support US policy. I have just reported on this in connection with Ukraine.

The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is an organisation founded, financed and controlled by the US government that was set up to carry out pro-American coups in other countries.²³ In an interview in the early 1990s, the founder of the NED said that the NED was doing “what the CIA did covertly 25 years ago”,²⁴ i.e. organising pro-American coups.

In the case of KRIK, too, it is difficult to disagree with the Serbian government’s accusations that the organisation is controlled by the West, especially since KRIK explicitly names USAID and the NED, which specialise in organising pro-American coups.

BIRN

Another NGO that the Serbian government accuses of supporting the protests is BIRN, which describes itself as the “Balkan Investigative Reporting Network” (BIRN). Its list of partners is very long and includes, among others, KRIK, the GIJN, the Ukrainian radio station Hromadskoe, which was founded with foreign money especially for the Maidan, Istinomer (more on this in a moment), and various Western media such as the BBC and the US state broadcaster Voice of America.²⁵

The list of BIRN’s financiers is also very long and includes, among others, British, Dutch, Norwegian, Luxembourg, Swedish and US embassies, the EU, Freedom House, the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, of course the NED and USAID again, Soros and Rockefeller.²⁶

So, BIRN is also an organisation that is completely financed and controlled by the West.

CRTA

The next NGO that supports the protests on its website is CRTA, which describes itself as the “Center for Research, Transparency and Accountability” (CRTA). On its website, the CRTA lists Sweden, Canada, Great Britain, Rockefeller and, of course, USAID and the NED as partners.²⁷

I repeat myself, but the CRTA is also a completely Western-funded and controlled organisation.

Istinomer

The next NGO that the Serbian government accuses of supporting the protests is Istinomer, which describes itself as a “fact checker”.²⁸ Istinomer only lists the EU as a financier on its website but claims that it does not necessarily represent the EU’s positions.²⁹

On its website, Istinomer lists the “European Fact Checkers Network” (EFCSN) as a partner. This network brings together a long list of self-proclaimed fact checkers³⁰ and, according to its own information, is financed exclusively by the EU Commission.³¹

The second partner named by Istinomer is Poynter’s IFCN programme, which sees itself as a global umbrella organisation for self-proclaimed fact-checkers.³² I have often reported on this and on the financing of Poynter, which again comes from the usual suspects already mentioned. The very interesting details about who decides in the West with whose money what is “fact” and what is “fake”.³³

At the risk of repeating myself, but also Istinomer is a completely Western-funded and controlled organisation.

Conclusion

The list of NGOs that the Serbian government accuses of being behind the protests in Serbia and planning a colour revolution could be continued and one always finds the same pattern.

This is the well-known pattern of the West, with which the public is misled: there is a plethora of experts, bloggers, influencers, media, NGOs and so on, all of whom have the same opinion, and people are simply wired to tend to side with such an unequivocal majority and to believe their narrative.

The public does not need to know that the same very small number of financiers, consisting of Western states and Western NGOs and foundations, are always behind this multitude.

Serbian President Vučić recently commented on the events as follows:

“I spent three days examining how much money has been flowing to various charitable organisations in our country – it’s a record amount. I even jokingly suggested using it as foreign direct investment.”³⁴

Incidentally, you can even recognise it by the symbols used, because they are practically always the same.³⁵ It is either a clenched fist or, since the attempted Guaido coup in Venezuela, an open hand. In Serbia, it currently looks like this.

By the way, in Venezuela, the symbol looked like this a few years ago:

Addendum: In response to the questions raised in the comments on this article, why Serbia does not simply regulate the work of these NGOs through a foreign agents’ law, as Georgia has done, for example, or ban them outright, a look at the map is recommended.

Georgia can afford this, Serbia cannot. Serbia is a landlocked country surrounded by NATO and EU states, while Georgia has access to the sea and neighbouring states that want to trade with Georgia and are not patronised by the EU Commission.

The EU Commission would only be too happy to seize this opportunity if Serbia took action against these NGOs, and would strangle Serbia with sanctions. And Serbia would be powerless to do anything about it because it has no access to the sea and would effectively be blockaded by its EU and NATO neighbours through sanctions.

* Thomas Röper, born in 1971, has held executive and supervisory board positions as an expert for Eastern Europe in financial services companies in Eastern Europe and Russia. Today he lives in his adopted home of St. Petersburg. He has lived in Russia for over 15 years and speaks fluent Russian. The focus of his media-critical work is the (media) image of Russia in Germany, criticism of Western media reporting in general and the topics of (geo-) politics and economics.
** cf. Die Weltwoche. Nr. 9. Philipp Gut. Operation «Regimewechsel», P. 32–33, 27 February 2025

Source: https://anti-spiegel.ru/2025/der-westen-zuendelt-wieder-in-serbien/, 1 February 2025

(Translation “Swiss Standpoint”)

1 https://anti-spiegel.ru/2019/unbeachtet-von-den-deutschen-medien-spitzt-sich-die-lage-im-kosovo-weiter-zu/

2 https://anti-spiegel.ru/2021/wie-in-russland-ueber-die-eskalation-zwischen-dem-kosovo-und-serbien-berichtet-wird/

3 https://anti-spiegel.ru/2022/die-gruende-fuer-die-eskalation-im-kosovo/

4 https://anti-spiegel.ru/2023/die-versuchte-farbrevolution-in-serbien-und-die-westlichen-medien/

5 https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/6849472

6 https://anti-spiegel.ru/2024/unruhen-und-blockierte-hauptstrassen-in-belgrad/

7 https://ria.ru/20240811/serbiya-1965516881.html

8 https://www.spiegel.de/ausland/serbien-tausende-bei-schweigeprotesten-gegen-staatsfuehrung-a-91de343d-87bd-43c3-b9b6-f906f8b9c756

9 https://www.spiegel.de/ausland/serbien-ministerpraesident-milos-vucevic-tritt-zurueck-a-b7bf7c0d-5fea-4ac6-a926-7fa5e8ec6bee

10 https://tass.ru/mezhdunarodnaya-panorama/23029831