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Comment by casenmgreen | Hacker News Reader

Serbia is one of the Russian-controlled Governments, along with Hungary and Georgia; these are the countries where we expect to see such attacks made to suppress protest.

(USA is not controlled, any more than say China is controlled, but is an authoritarian regime (so no real elections), so there's a shared world view, and here also I would expect to see much the same.)

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It's incorrect that Serbia has Russian-controlled government. Why would you say that? We're quite capable of having our own independent dictator, thank you. If anything, Vučić was widely supported by EU. One of our problems is that there's almost no pressure on government from any external side - not from US, not from EU, not from Russia, not from China. Opposition is entirely internal.

Pressure from the outside can always lead to polarization and finger pointing as it can't be expected (reasonably) that the other country doesn't in fact has a hidden agenda. So I think it is good there is no pressure from the outside, the government can't say "but it's the evil X that pressure us and supports the riots!"

I do hope something comes out of the protests (even if it is just the government being a bit less corrupt), without more horrible violence. But moving societies is hard and many times painful.

Can you share some details about this EU support?

I don't think it's totally clear-cut that the USA isn't currently Russian-controlled, at least in terms of some of the higher offices.

It is not Russia-controlled but it has a long history of relationship with Russia: for example, Russian Empire entered WW1 to protect Serbia.

the Russians supported Serbia in the 90s as well, albeit in a more limited fashion since the wall just came down and things were pretty raw and hectic in the post-USSR world.

> Serbia is one of the Russian-controlled Governments

Serbia is a major weapons supplier for Ukraine [0][1][2] and has backed Ukraine's stance on Crimea as it has implications for Serbia's stance on Kosovo.

Vucic only cares about Vucic, and will work with any country (Germany [3], Russia, China [4], America [5], Turkiye [6], UAE [7], etc) to continue to hold power and balance alternatives.

By becoming close with every major player in the region, it makes it easier for Vucic to continue to crackdown on opposition without dealing with condemnations (eg. Germany will remain silent because of the billions in FDI).

Orban did the same thing, but after grinding the EP to a halt, patients for Orban grew thin. By remaining outside the EU, Vucic can continue to hold power while not burning that many bridges with European leadership.

> USA is not controlled, any more than say China is controlled, but is an authoritarian regime (so no real elections)

Huh? Serbia is a night and day difference to the US. The best comparison to the US is probably Israel.

[0] - https://www.reuters.com/world/leaked-us-intel-document-claim...

[1] - https://www.economist.com/europe/2024/09/19/ukraine-is-a-boo...

[2] - https://www.ft.com/content/136ed721-fd50-4815-8314-d9df8dc67...

[3] - https://www.politico.eu/article/serbian-president-aleksandar...

[4] - https://apnews.com/article/serbia-china-xi-jinping-visit-nat...

[5] - https://amp.dw.com/en/serbia-and-us-the-next-great-trans-atl...

[6] - https://www.dailysabah.com/politics/diplomacy/defense-at-for...

[7] - https://www.mei.edu/publications/serbias-best-friend-arab-wo...

I am corrected.

Thank you, and very much; I had thought I knew where Serbia was in things, but I was mistaken. I don't want to be mistaken, especially not now, where the situation is so serious. It's an excellent post, and I'm very grateful to you for the time you spent pulling all the links together.

Given the correction, can you edit your initial comment?

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