BELGRADE: Serbia’s president on Sunday accused demonstrators who opposed 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 have blocked railway 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, 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. Riot police early Sunday pushed them out of the railway stations with their riot shields.
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This plan against lithium mining was scrapped in 2022 after large demonstrations were held that included the blocking of key bridges and roads.
Interior Minister Ivica Dacic said 14 people have been brought in for questioning. Police are working to identify all the perpetrators who will face charges, he said.
Vucic told reporters that although the main protest was done democratically, the blockage of traffic on the highway amounted to “terror of the minority over the majority.”
“It is part of the hybrid approach” designed to topple the government, Vucic 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.”
Vucic said last week he had been tipped off by Russian intelligence services that a “mass unrest and a coup” were being prepared in Serbia by unspecified Western powers that wish to oust him from power.
Government officials and state-controlled media have launched a major campaign against the Saturday rally, comparing it to the Maidan uprising in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv.
