In Belgrade, Serbia, on 15 March, saw what was undoubtedly the largest protest in the history of Serbia. According to the Archive of Public Gatherings, it numbered around 300,000 people, with many estimating that it was even larger.
After big gatherings in February at Autokomanda, a key traffic interchange in Belgrade, and on the Freedom Bridge in Novi Sad, students continued with new gatherings in Kragujevac and Niš, in preparation for Saturday's protest. Although the students announced that Saturday’s rally would not be the last, many imagined that it would be the day when the regime of Aleksandar Vučić fell.
Even the day before the big protest, pictures and videos circulated on social media of huge columns of cars waiting at highway toll booths on the road to Belgrade. Because a large gathering was anticipated, many decided to come to Belgrade a day earlier so as not to have trouble with traffic on the day of the protest.
From all over Serbia, students and activists organised marches to the capital. From village to village, city to city, they were welcomed as heroes and supported by local residents. There was a special welcome when they arrived in Belgrade, where the students had prepared thousands of mattresses to accommodate their comrades from all over Serbia.
On the day of the protest, many who came from the western and northern highways parked in New Belgrade, which is at least an hour's walk from the protest site. Throughout the morning, cheerful columns of people moved from that part of the city, blowing whistles and vuvuzelas, and shouting ‘pump it’, which became the symbolic slogan of the protest. A continuous column of people crossed Branko’s Bridge, which connects New Belgrade with Belgrade. On arrival in Belgrade, the entire city seemed to be blocked with traffic, the police having established frequent checkpoints.
New drone footage shows Serbia’s protests at a massive scale, with an estimated million demonstrators flooding Belgrade to demand accountability.
— red. (@redstreamnet) March 15, 2025
The movement began after last year’s Novi Sad train station collapse, which killed 15 people and exposed deep-rooted negligence. pic.twitter.com/mKUlSMa3Ki
As the scheduled hour of the main gathering approached, the crowd seemed endless. In some key places, it was extremely difficult to get by at all. Our leaflets were received with genuine curiosity among the demonstrators, who showed a great interest in our revolutionary politics.
The protest was held in two key places – on Slavija Square and in front of the Parliament building – but really it was impossible to determine either the beginning or the end of the gathering. During the protest, it seemed like one big, endless festival, in which the people were in a constant state of movement, full of energy. Rivers of people moved in different directions, and since many were not from Belgrade, they often just followed the crowd, hoping they were going the right way.
War veterans and bikers helped the students safely steward the gathering. Speeches were held in Slavija Square. As has become tradition for the protests, hundreds of thousands of people participated in 15 minutes of silence for the 15 victims who were killed on 1 November 2024 when the concrete canopy of a railway station in Novi Sad collapsed, for the failed reconstruction of which the regime was responsible.
The squalid Vučić regime
Leading up to the big protest, the squalid nature of the Vučić regime was on full display. Since the fall of the canopy that killed 15 people, it has managed to unite all the forces of Serbia against it, on account of the repressive measures and lies of every kind that it has used to defend itself at each step.
The state apparatus is extremely weak and has been unable to manage the situation. In fear of its own collapse, it has acted with desperate measures. In preparation for a showdown on 15 March, Vučić announced that there would be great violence. Everyone understood that he would be its initiator.
The regime’s most morbid method of defending its rule was the formation of an encampment of Vučić’s ‘supporters’. The regime gathered them and presented them as students who wanted to stop the university occupations so they could study. The closer the date of the protest came, the more the camp was filled with lumpen elements, some desperate and impoverished, some from the criminal milieu. In addition, many people who had been given employment by the ruling party were pressured to join the camp. Serbs from the North of Kosovo were also brought in, although it seemed that many were there against their will.
Thugs from the camp, including one of Vučić’s close confidants / Image: @ dragantrifunovic_helivideo, Instagram
Presence in the camp was rewarded with substantial daily wages. The camp had private security and it was eventually fenced off: not to protect the ‘residents’, but to prevent them from escaping from the camp. In addition, the police guarded the camp but did not prevent attacks on the protesters by the camp’s thugs. The camp was located right across the street from the Parliament building so that the regime could surround the demonstrators, keep the police in strategic locations, and have their thugs ready at all times to ‘defend’ parliament.
The day before the protest, the regime arrested several student and opposition activists, due to audio recordings which had been made in the offices of a small opposition party. In other words, the regime eavesdropped on them, and then released the recordings to the public through its media. The audio recordings discussed what the activists planned to do on 15 March, and the regime used some of their proposals and ideas to arrest and accuse the activists of subverting the constitutional order. Of course, that accusation was unfounded and was used to intimidate other activists.
A disturbing incident also occurred during the 15 minutes of silence. Videos surfaced on the internet where, at one part of the protest, a mass of people, suddenly and unprovoked, started a stampede and moved to take refuge on the sidewalk. Many described a surreal experience of loud sounds and vibrations. People, fearful of previous incidents of cars driving through protests, suddenly moved out of the way. There are strong suspicions that a sonic crowd-control weapon was used. If that wasn’t bad enough, the use of such underhand methods at the most peaceful moment of the protest speaks volumes.
At one point in the protest, tensions began to rise. Masked people gathered near the encampment, and rocks started flying from the camp. Because of all of Vučić’s threats, many were aware that there could be casualties. The student stewards used markers to write their parents' phone numbers and blood type on their arms, in case of any incidents. As the matter seemed like it could escalate beyond their control, the students decided to prematurely end the protest, in order to prevent violence.
Evaluation of the protest
This abrupt end to the protest surprised many, but most accepted it without objection. With that decision, the energy suddenly dropped. Soon people started to return to their homes and in less than a couple of hours, it was a normal Saturday night in Belgrade. But the day after, it was clear that the mood for struggle in Serbia had not abated. There was a feeling of triumph that Serbia had witnessed the largest protest in its history, an event bursting with love and solidarity.
The students held a new blockade to show that it will be they who decide when it’s over, in response to Vučić, who felt confident that he had survived 15 March. In Niš, returning students were welcomed as heroes, and in Obrenovac, municipal workers were pelted with eggs, a revolt against the fact that some of them had participated in Vučić’s encampment.
This protest also raised some important questions. The main question arises from the fact that Vučić obviously will not step down from power, even when faced with a mega-protest: it is quite possible that 15 March gathered more than 5 percent of Serbia’s population in one city.
On the other hand, it urgently poses the question of the need for clear political leadership among the students. On 15 March, the plans for the main location of the protest were changed suddenly several times, leading to a compromise for it to be held both on Slavija Square and in front of the Parliament. This happens when there is no clearly defined leading student body. It is clear that – although forms of direct democracy have maintained the cohesion of the movement by maximising the participation and involvement of a large layer – the absence of an elected leadership leaves a vacuum that is filled by groups of student activists, generating a certain degree of confusion. With clearly delegated student leadership, it would be known at every moment who is responsible for what.
What has also become clear is that although students are at the forefront of the movement, they have not given it a clear political direction. For three and a half months, they have demanded the publication of documentation relating to the fall of the canopy. But despite three and a half months of commendable effort and struggle, it has not produced results. Vučić's apparatus is scared, but it has remained fundamentally intact.
On the one hand, this is due to insufficient direct involvement on the part of the working class, which still does not have sufficient confidence to launch a more determined struggle. On the other hand, since the students are the ones who have legitimacy in the eyes of the working class, they could offer a political direction for the movement that would amplify the chance of mobilising the working class. So far this has been lacking.
With such an influence in society because of their heroic role in the movement, the students should stand at the head of the movement politically as well. They have already gone very far in the correct direction with their calls for a general strike, and even more so with the call for general assemblies of workers and citizens.
But in order for that call to really resonate, they must form a central body out of their plenums, with a national leadership and a political programme. Plenums must be organised not only on a University level, but also by forming permanent official joint bodies at the level of cities and at the national level, which would have the mandate to implement the will of the students. With this, they would not only deepen their legitimacy among the working people of Serbia, but also demonstrate their ability to directly politically lead them towards the overthrow of Vučić.
The working class has become more actively involved in strike activities, which we have seen in the schools, the judiciary, at ‘Nikola Tesla’ airport, in the Post Office, at GSP Belgrade and Elektroprivreda Srbije. These strikes may herald a larger movement of the working class.
Vučić's regime has lost most of its legitimacy. The present situation shows a dangerous tendency where the extension of his rule could lead to an even more poisonous state of society. It is high time that the working class, as the class that holds the main economic levers in society, helps its children and the students jointly defeat Vučić and his criminal regime.