Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic's bid to become Brussels' favorite Balkan leader is failing. Vucic was able to close a deal to supply the European Union with the lithium needed to power his future electric vehicle fleet.
But in doing so, he roused a mass movement against a major mining project that was blessed by both Brussels and Berlin. Gripped by fear, he accused tens of thousands of protesters who gathered on August 10 of plotting to overthrow him.
"This is part of the hybrid approach to conducting 'color' revolutions," Vucic told reporters, adding that his warning of a possible coup d'état was based on information received from Russia, the Balkan state's historic patron.
It's a real paradox: by turning to the West to enable a transition to a green future, Vucic, his critics say, has condemned Serbia's population of 7 million to further economic exploitation and environmental pollution, which only further further distancing it from Western standards of democracy and transparency.
"We are becoming a colony of all the great powers," said Nebojsa Petkovic, a protest leader from Gorna Nedelica, a village in northwestern Serbia located next to the main site of the planned lithium mine.
For almost two decades, Petkovic and his neighbors have watched geologists and prospectors flock to the banks of the Yadar River. There they discovered rich deposits of "white gold" that some estimates could provide up to 90% of the lithium Europe needs to power its transition to zero-emissions transport.
Anglo-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto is among the first explorers. It received permission to develop the Jadar field in 2017 - five years after Vucic first came to power - only to revoke it after an earlier wave of protests two years ago.
However, the hardline nationalist never gave up on the project. And despite doubts about its democratic nature, the EU relies on it and encourages it to deliver.
Yadar is home to some of the largest lithium reserves in Europe. The Ministry of Mines and Energy estimates that the mine, which is expected to open in 2028, will produce 58,000 metric tons by 2030 - enough to put batteries in 1.1 million electric vehicles. Rio Tinto has allocated 2.55 billion dollars (2.23 billion euros) for the implementation of the project.
The EU's enthusiasm is not shared by people in Serbia, who believe that Brussels' dependence on Vucic has only encouraged his autocratic tendencies. Analysts say public trust in the EU has plummeted after promises by the bloc's leaders to promote democratic values in the long-time candidate for membership sound increasingly unconvincing.
"The EU is showing hypocrisy because it supports a dictator in Serbia who blocks the judiciary, the media and everything else, but it's acceptable to them because he's going to supply them with the lithium they so badly need," Petkovic told Politico. The Serbian government did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
The Kremlin model
In July, Vucic welcomed German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and EU Green Deal chief Maros Šefčovič with pomp and verbosity to sign an agreement formalizing EU support for the mine, as well as several memorandums signed with major car manufacturers such as Mercedes-Benz and Stellantis.
Just two months earlier, Chinese President Xi Jinping was greeted with an even more lavish ceremony, as hundreds of Serbs gathered to greet him, waving Chinese flags and praising "iron friendship" on his first trip to Europe since the coronavirus pandemic.
While surprising to uninitiated observers, both events epitomize Vucic's approach to foreign policy. It boils down to welcoming anyone who wants to invest - such as China's Zijin copper plant in Bor or Russia, which owns more than 50% of Serbia's oil and gas interests - as long as they don't interfere in the country's internal affairs.
According to Aleksandar Jokic, an expert on Serbian-Russian relations, Moscow will be happy to support Vucic's claims of a coup, no matter what deal he makes with the West - including allowing him to use his favorite "color revolution" label to delegitimize protests against the Yadar project.
If Russia claims that a color revolution is underway in Serbia, Vucic "can position himself as a brave or almost mythical fighter against the evil, meddling West," Jokic explains. "If protests happen in Russia, Moldova or Georgia, they cannot be because people organically dislike their government's policies; they must be supported and even financed by the West'.
This is ironic given that the protesters against the lithium mine are against a project that the West really wants. (The US and UK ambassadors to Serbia also expressed support for the deal).
"Vucic's message on this matter is confused. When he defends the Rio Tinto mine, he says that it is proof of the great progress that Serbia has made in its rapprochement with the West," continues Jokic. "But when people protest the mine, he claims it's a Western-backed coup."
In Vucic's Serbia, very little reaches the national airwaves unless he approves the message. The weekend demonstration received a 24-second mention on public television's evening news, which usually ignores anti-government protests. If the protesters' demands were actually reflected, the public would understand that their concerns were largely environmental.
"These protests are political, in the sense that the environment is also a political issue. But apart from that, there is no other political motivation," says Jaklina Zivkovic, an activist with Pravo na vodu (Right to Water), a group that campaigns for clean rivers.
"We are worried about the environment and about the future of Serbia because we don't want to become a mining country," she added, pointing to heavy pollution from Chinese-run mining companies and earlier heavy industry from the Yugoslavian era. .
To get around the media blackout they face, protesters resort to blocking highways and thoroughfares. In this way, citizens who cannot see what is happening on the news will be physically forced to stop and learn about the consequences of the mine's operation.
One concern among environmentalists is that the corrosive acids needed to separate lithium from other compounds could leak, suppress plant growth and harm ecosystems, as the mine could contaminate soil and water in a region that relies on a large extent of agriculture.
"We want to keep what we have and we want to have institutions that can guarantee clean air, clean water and a clean environment," Zivkovic continued, stressing that "about 1.5 million people in Serbia do not have access to clean water ".
Rio Tinto has run an extensive campaign of its own to assuage these environmental concerns.
"We respect the right to protest, but what we see here is a campaign of fear mongering - deliberate and intentional misinformation that we are an open land mine, that we are going to poison the water resources, that agriculture is going to die... anything that can create fear Chad Blewitt, managing director of the Yadar Project, said in an interview with Politico.
Denying the activists' claims, Rio Tinto says the underground mine will fully comply with EU and Serbian environmental laws. In June, the company published preliminary drafts of environmental impact assessment studies covering the mine, surface treatment plant and industrial waste landfill.
"We have been working on this project for 20 years and have spent 600 million euros on it. It is the most explored lithium project in the world,” Blewitt claims.
Blewitt echoed some of Scholz and Šefcović's statements, namely that the mine will be built and operated not only to EU standards, but to the "highest standards in the world".
However, activists are determined to step up the pressure. "They say the sacrifices are worth it, but we don't agree," Zivkovic said categorically. | BGNES
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Una Haidari, Antonia Zimmerman and Stuart Lau, Politico
