Serbia has requested help from the European Union as firefighters battle dozens of fires across the country. One person has died and several are injured. Interior Minister Ivica Dacic told a press conference that Belgrade had activated the EU Civil Protection Mechanism and requested additional firefighting aircraft, helicopters and vehicles.

The worst situation is in the Deliblato Sands nature reserve, where more than 3,500 hectares of forest and vegetation have burned. The reserve lies around seventy kilometres northeast of Belgrade.

Why this fire refuses to go out

Helicopters of the Interior Ministry, the army and a Russian Ilyushin aircraft deployed since Thursday are working on the ground. Despite that, firefighting is going badly for three reasons that reinforce each other: strong wind, difficult sandy terrain and humus burning below the surface.

The last of these is the least understood and the most damaging. When the humus underground burns, the fire returns to places where it appeared to have been put out. The firefighters leave, and a few hours later the same area is ablaze again. That is not a failure by the crews - that is the physics of the terrain.

Asking for help is a damning figure in itself

Activating the European mechanism is not a formality. It is an admission that domestic capacity is not enough. Serbia is not a small country and not a country without firefighting aviation - and yet, in August 2026, it is asking for aircraft from outside.

The region is watching the same thing this summer in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where firefighting is further complicated by minefields left over from the war. Every country in the region has the same task - to meet the summer with equipment that works and enough people to use it.

The question every state in the region should ask itself is not how to fight a fire in August. The question is what it did in January.