City (Geo)Politics. Public space and foreign policy in Belgrade
The city reflects Serbia's contradictions and constraints. The pursuit of a modern identity, mobilizing emotional historical legacies, domestic political contestation under increasing repression
It begins with a trip from the airport into the city, where visitors are greeted with the message that “Kosovo is Serbia”, graffitied across the motorway bridge. One of the first billboards along the motorway shows the Russian and Serbian flags merging into one, displaying the message Zajedno! (Together) and branded with a blue Gazprom logo.
By entering Belgrade’s city space, visitors are immediately exposed to the tensions over Serbia’s foreign policy orientation, shaped by historical references of past grandeur, perceptions of past injustice, the unresolved relationship with Kosovo, and the strive to be a modern, global city, albeit one whose development is steered by captured State institutions.
Controversial foreign investments and local contestation
Crossing the Sava River, an emblematic part of the controversial modernization project becomes visible with the sprawling high-rises of the Belgrade Waterfront, a luxurious set of buildings including apartments, storefronts, and restaurants along the river, financed by an Emirati company with over 3 billion euros.
The development is symbolic, not only for increasing foreign investments in the city, but also for the contestation against the government’s authoritarian implementation of such deals, often sidelining tender procedures and labour and environmental standards. After a group of masked men demolished buildings that stood in the way of the Waterfront overnight under the eyes of the police in 2016, it became the site and object of numerous protests against the government.
The civil society coalition born in these protests, Don’t Let Belgrade D(r)own, ultimately consolidated into a political movement and opposition party that stood for election in 2020, entering Parliament as the Green-Left Front in 2022, and merging with other opposition forces in the Serbia Against Violence coalition in the last election. Despite the protests, the Waterfront continued and continues to be developed. Many of the apartments in the Waterfront remain empty, as most Belgraders cannot afford rent.
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In recent years, large-scale investments by non-Western countries in Serbia have come under scrutiny from the EU and US. As the latter began adopting a more critical stance towards China, Serbia expanded cooperation, primarily through infrastructure and manufacturing deals, like the Belgrade-Novi Sad railway connection, the Smederevo steel plant and a tire factory in Zrenjanin, deals which have raised alerts over excessive debt risks, pollution, and labour abuses. In Belgrade, a new manifestation of the cooperation appears to be technological: ‘smart’ cameras are mushrooming on busy intersections in the center, supplied by China’s Huawei. Digital rights experts and civil society actors have heavily criticized the fact that these cameras are able to collect biometric surveillance data.
Nonetheless, it would be simplistic to conclude that all contested city development projects are set up through deals with non-Western investors. Belgrade’s modern Nikola Tesla airport, for example, was built thanks to French investment. Also with French investors, Belgrade is currently developing its Metro – a project that, similarly to many, raised questions over transparency and environmental protection. And Belgrade’s next controversial investment comes from the US: Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner just announced a building project on the site of the former Yugoslav Ministry of Defence, bombed in NATO’s intervention against Serbia in 1999 and left in its original state since then.
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The legacy of the NATO intervention and the status of Kosovo
In fact, in central Belgrade, it is impossible to miss the legacy of NATO’s bombing campaign, which marked its 25th anniversary this year, and Belgrade’s continuous resistance to the independence of Kosovo. Lacking UN Security Council authorization due to a Russian veto, the intervention is viewed by international actors as “illegal but legitimate” to stop Slobodan Milosevic’s assault on Kosovo and further atrocities. Commemorative plates in Belgrade, for example in the Tašmajdan park close to Serbia’s Parliament, take the government’s line to remember the bombings as the “NATO aggression”.
Across from the seat of the government (Vlada) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs towers the impressive bombed-out structure of the former Yugoslav Ministry of Defence, referred to as the Generalštab (the current Ministry of Defence is located right next to the complex). Its state remained unchanged, apart from some minor consolidation works, for 25 years, an ever-visible reminder of past injustice. Enter Jared Kushner, who made a tentative deal with the government to develop the site into a luxury hotel and apartments in March. Boasting of the project on Twitter, Kushner shared a design of the complex featuring skyscrapers three times the height of the surrounding buildings.
A few meters from the site, on the sidewalk next to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a commemorative banner deplores the fates of the civilian victims of the bombings. It also shows how the legacy of 1999 remains connected to the dispute over the status of Kosovo. On its reverse side, it proclaims that “Serbia without Kosovo would be like a human without heart”.
When I returned to the site a few days ago, shortly after the favourable vote of the Council of Europe’s parliamentary on Kosovo’s membership the banner had been changed to a red banner saying: “Kosovo and Metohija will always be Serbia, never Greater Albania”.
In tags on walls across the city, similar messages appear, together with graffiti like “F*ck NATO”, murals displaying convicted war criminal Ratko Mladić as a “hero”, and an occasional “Z” in support of Russia’s war on Ukraine. Last month, an activist who defaced a Mladić mural in Belgrade 2021 was handed a three-month prison sentence.
Aside from commemorating the more recent past, the mobilization of Serbia’s medieval “Golden Age” is visible in the center of Belgrade, in an imposing bronze statue towering at 23 meters high in front of the old railway station. It displays Prince Stefan Nemanja, mythical founder of the Nemanjić dynasty and father of Belgrade’s patron saint Sava, who led Serbs to battle in the 12th century. Produced by a Russian sculptor at an estimated nine million euros, the structure is perceived as an attempt of Serbia’s leadership to display themselves as heirs to the medieval Serbian State.
Between Russian opposition and Russian support
Interconnected with regional and local complexities, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has also changed societal and spatial dynamics in Belgrade. Although estimates vary, around 100 thousand Russian nationals have taken up residence in Serbia since February 2022.
Serbia maintains a visa-free regime with Russia and is the only country in the region that has not followed the EU in sanctioning Russia. This allows Russian companies to operate in the city, and Russian citizens to found new restaurants and cafés popping up all over Belgrade – but the influx of mostly middle-class immigrants has also sent real estate prices spiking for everyone else.
Russians in the city face a paradoxical situation: while Serbia is the only European country that will allow them in, it is also the European country which is most supportive of Vladimir Putin. According to a 2022 poll by the Belgrade Centre for Security Policy, 51% of Serbians see Russia as the country’s largest economic partner, compared to 18% seeing the EU as such. The same poll also shows over 60% of support for the claim that the war was provoked by NATO or the US.
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At souvenir shops around the main street Knez Mihailova, cups and shirts with Putin’s likeness are on sale (I have spotted none of Ursula von der Leyen thus far). Support for Russia is often explained with Russia’s support of Serbia on the non-recognition of Kosovo and a general anti-Western sentiment that is largely the result of the NATO bombing campaign and sanctions against the country in the 1990s. Emotional ties are also constructed through the Orthodox Church. After all, the beautiful golden mosaics of the Saint Sava Church atop of Belgrade’s Vračar Hill was made possible with Russian financing, announced during a visit of Putin himself.
Media analyses show that pro-Russian narratives were systematically strengthened under Vučić’s reign through government media – explaining a rise in societal support for Russia in the public not as a fixture, but a carefully constructed trend. And even though opinion polls indicate that many consider Russia a political partner, most Serbians do not wish to travel, study or live in Russia.
In Belgrade, “Z” graffiti has appeared on walls since 2022. Like other murals, these are often sprayed over or covered with other symbols, and like with other symbols, there is intimidation against those who remove them. A recent ARTE documentary that follows a Russian dissident who paints Ukrainian flags over “Z”’s in Belgrade shows the same man getting verbally aggressed by a group of young Serbian men. And a few cases of Russian anti-war activists seeing residence permits annulled have become public in the last year, limiting options for dissent even to Russians abroad.
The pressing questions of Serbian (foreign) policy are impossible to ignore in Belgrade’s public space. As the city is preparing a re-run of the December 2023 elections, after domestic and international observers found widespread fraud and irregularities. The city remains a contested space, as symbols of state dominance meet with democratic contestation.
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