Vucic concedes defeat in Serbian elections: opposition Student List wins majority

Opposition wins early elections

Early parliamentary elections were held in Serbia on October 25, resulting in victory for the opposition Student List. Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic conceded the defeat of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party. According to him, the opposition will receive between 135 and 140 seats in parliament, while the SNS will have about 105 mandates. According to the election commission, the Student List is gaining 51.20% of the vote, while Vucic's coalition has 40.16%. Gazeta.Ru reports this.

The question of sanctions against Russia remains open

Vucic warned that after the opposition's victory, Serbia will in the near future — in his words, by spring — join sanctions against Russia. However, Nikolai Topornin, director of the Center for European Information and an international law expert, told Gazeta.Ru that this question is 'not fully resolved' and did not rule out that Serbia will not take such a step. In his assessment, no anti-Russian slogans were heard in the Student List's campaign, and its leaders stated that no one intends to revise friendly relations with Russia and that there will be no '180-degree turn.' A scenario of Serbia imposing sanctions against Russia had already been mentioned earlier.

Why this matters

The election results directly affect Serbia's foreign policy course and its relations with Russia: it is the composition of the new parliament that will determine whether the sanctions accession promised by Vucic will follow. For Russia and Serbian citizens, possible changes in trade and diplomatic ties are of practical importance. For now, no final decision on sanctions has been made, and assessments diverge: the president's statement versus the expert's opinion that no turn will occur.