Vladimir Putin has lost one of his best buddies in Europe.
Serbian leader Aleksandar Vučić has been removed from power by the Student List, an anti-corruption movement, in a clear-cut 53-39 percent election victory on Sunday.
Vučić, 56, enjoyed close ties with the Russian dictator, 74, and was one of his few allies on the continent alongside Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, who was ousted from office six months ago.
Vučić, who had been Serbia’s undisputed leader for 12 years, had been trying to pull off a desperate play from his pal Putin’s playbook, resigning as president before the end of his second term and calling an early election in the hope of returning as prime minister.
Putin played the same game in 2008, playing tag with his premier Dmitry Medvedev to avoid a constitutional bar on a third consecutive presidential term.
Although the president is the head of state in Russia, Putin held real power for four years as prime minister while Medvedev was president, before returning to the top job in 2012.
There was no such luck for Vučić, who had come under increasing pressure following the collapse of a train station canopy in 2024, which killed 16 people and sparked allegations that its construction had been shoddy and a result of endemic corruption.
He conceded before the results were announced, blaming “a revolution fuelled by European countries and the deep American state, the one which is against Trump.”
“I am proud of everything we have done,” he told his followers, before saying, without evidence, that the opposition was “lying about everything.”
He pledged, “I’ll defeat them much sooner than they think.”
The Student List will have 140 seats in parliament compared to his Serbian Progressive Party’s 105, but has not yet chosen a single leader.
“This is a record, historic turnout and a positive sign for Serbia,” Rasa Nedeljkov, the head of Serbia’s election monitoring body, CRTA, said. The group announced the election results.
Vučić’s concession was met with scenes of jubilation in the capital, Belgrade, and around the Balkan nation’s towns and cities.
“This is the victory of the conviction that Serbia can and will do better,” said Radomir Saicic, a chemistry professor at the University of Belgrade and one of the movement’s leaders. “We call on all citizens to act peacefully and in dignified manner. We didn’t fight for months to lose it.” He has been tipped as a possible future president.
So far, the transition of power has been peaceful, but Putin will fear a repeat of what happened in Hungary.
After years of close ties with Moscow, Budapest’s new government has undertaken a process of “de-Orbánisation” and expelled Russian diplomats.
Hungary and Serbia represented oases within a European political desert that the Kremlin ultimately regards as an enemy hellbent on the destruction of Russia.
“The Russians would of course prefer to have Vučić remain. Vučić has been tested over time and through various crises,” Russia and Balkans expert Denis Cenusa told the Telegraph ahead of the election. “Everything would change dramatically if Vučić loses.”
