Serbian president says lithium protests part of ‘hybrid’ warfare against country

Serbia’s president has accused demonstrators who oppose a lithium mining project in the Balkan country of being part of a Western-backed “hybrid” warfare against his government and vowed to take strong legal action against those protesters who blocked rail and road traffic in the capital a day earlier.

In one of the biggest protests in recent years, tens of thousands took to the streets in the capital, Belgrade, on Saturday against lithium mining in Serbia, despite officials’ warnings of their alleged plot to unseat populist President Aleksandar Vucic and his government.

Some of the protesters later blocked tracks at two railway stations in the city, and briefly stopped traffic on a major highway.

Early on Sunday, riot police pushed them out of the stations with their riot shields.

Interior minister Ivica Dacic said 14 people have been taken in for questioning.

Police are working to identify all the perpetrators, who will face charges, he added.

Mr Vucic told reporters on Sunday that, although the main protest was done democratically, the blocking of traffic amounted to “terror of the minority over the majority”.

“It is part of the hybrid approach” designed to topple the government, he told reporters. “We knew everything in detail. You think you have surprised someone… we have always been restrained, without violence we ensured order in the country, without a problem.”

The president said last week that he had been tipped off by Russian intelligence services that “mass unrest and a coup” were being prepared in Serbia by unspecified Western powers that want to oust him from power.

Government officials and state-controlled media launched a major campaign against Saturday’s rally, comparing it to the Maidan uprising in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, that led to the toppling of the country’s then pro-Russia president Viktor Yanukovych in 2013.

Organisers of the Belgrade protest repeatedly denied those charges.

Saturday’s demonstration came after weeks of protests in dozens of cities throughout Serbia against a government plan to allow lithium mining in a lush farming valley in the west of the country.

This plan was scrapped in 2022 after large demonstrations were held that included the blocking of key bridges and roads. But it was revived last month and received a boost in a tentative deal on “critical raw materials” signed by Mr Vucic’s government with the European Union.

The Balkan nation is formally seeking EU membership while maintaining very close ties with both Russia and China.

The EU memorandum on the mining of lithium and other key materials needed for the green transition would bring Serbia closer to the bloc, and would reduce Europe’s lithium battery and electric car dependency on China.

While the government insists that the mine is an opportunity for economic development, critics say it would inflict irreparable pollution on the Jadar Valley, along with its crucial underground water reserves and farming land.

Mr Vucic said on Sunday that there will be no lithium mining in the next two years while all the risks are being investigated, in an apparent attempt to pacify critics.

He also offered a referendum on the issue – something unlikely to be considered by environmentalists with the president’s alleged history of rigging votes in his favour.