Vučić Warns After His Defeat: "By March or April You Will Have Sanctions Against Russia" - a Forecast or His First Opposition Card?

He lost the election, he conceded - and in the same speech he pulled out the Moscow card. "What is worrying, let me tell you right away, and I didn't lie to you during the campaign either: by March or April you will have sanctions introduced against the Russian Federation," Aleksandar Vučić told his supporters at SNS headquarters.

According to him, the winners "will do everything they didn't want to tell you", because, as he put it, they are "just contractors and nothing more than that". In the same breath he congratulated Nataša Kandić, claiming the students had won "with enormous foreign support". Who commissioned those "works", Vučić did not say. Nor did he offer any evidence.

The context is familiar. Serbia is an EU candidate, but since the start of Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 it has refused to align its sanctions with Brussels. Macedonia did the opposite: it aligned its sanctions with the EU and ended up on Russia's list of "unfriendly countries". For years Belgrade sat on two chairs - and Vučić is now presenting his defeat as the end of that balancing act.

Did the Student List really promise sanctions? Not a single statement of theirs was quoted in the speech. All that remains is the deadline - "March or April" - and the warning: "You will see everything in six months." If the forecast comes true, Vučić will say he was right. If it doesn't, few will remember he ever said it.

The speech ended without a farewell. "From tonight we start preparing, we're going to beat them. Long live Serbia!" Vučić said, as the headquarters sang "Ruzmarin". On his very first night after defeat, the leader of the party that ran Serbia for 14 years found his main argument. Will fear of sanctions be enough for the comeback he announced - "sooner than they think"?