By Don Terry | Tuesday, May 20, 2025 | 6 min read
Belgrade, Serbia — It started with rubble. Sixteen lives lost beneath a collapsed concrete canopy at a train station in Belgrade. It could’ve been written off as a freak accident. That’s what the government tried to do. But the people of Serbia saw something else: a regime rotting from the inside. They took to the streets, and they haven’t left since.
What began in mourning has grown into a nationwide roar—an uprising not just against Aleksandar Vučić, Serbia’s embattled president, but against the entire machinery of cronyism and control that’s kept him in power. Students, pensioners, union members, and parents now walk side by side, demanding a country that doesn’t bury its citizens under the weight of corruption.
“Authoritarians don’t govern—they rig,” said a protester waving a hand-painted sign outside the parliament building. “And we’re done living in the wreckage.”
Vučić, often likened to Donald Trump for his autocratic instincts and war on dissent, has ruled with a heavy hand and a tight grip on media. But this time, the anger isn’t just simmering—it’s boiling. And it’s drawing global eyes to a curious thread stretching from Belgrade all the way to Mar-a-Lago.
The Trump-Kushner Footprint
While Serbia was mourning its dead, Donald Trump Jr. was quietly flying in and out of the country. The trips raised eyebrows, then sparked outrage, as details emerged of a murky $500 million real estate project planned for one of Serbia’s most symbolic sites: the ruins of the former Yugoslav Army headquarters, bombed by NATO in 1999 and since preserved as a monument to national trauma.
The plan? Tear it down and build a luxury complex backed by the Trump and Kushner families.
“It’s an insult,” said Jelena Marković, a historian who lost family during the NATO strikes. “This place is sacred to us. They want to erase our pain and turn it into a playground for billionaires.”
To grease the wheels, Vučić’s government reportedly leaned on a fraudulent “expert opinion” claiming the building no longer held cultural value. That document was used to revoke its protected status. But the forgery didn’t hold. When investigators exposed the ruse, it blew up in their faces—leading to criminal charges against the country’s top heritage official and halting the project in its tracks.
“Corruption loves secrecy,” a Belgrade journalist told us. “But once people start watching, the lies collapse like that canopy did.”
“We Want a Country That Doesn’t Kill Us”
From the protests that followed, a movement was born—not of partisanship, but of survival. Marches have flooded cities big and small, often with nothing but grit, handmade signs, and chants demanding a future not bought and sold by oligarchs.
“No More Stolen Futures.”
“Vučić Out.”
“We Want a Country That Doesn’t Kill Us.”
These are not empty slogans. They’re eulogies turned into demands.
What’s remarkable is the staying power. This isn’t a weekend tantrum. It’s a sustained reckoning. Protesters aren’t dispersing at dusk—they’re setting up community kitchens, offering first aid, and organizing legal aid for those arrested.
“It’s not just Vučić,” said Milovan, a former civil engineer who now joins the marches every day. “It’s the system that lets these men broker our history like it’s theirs to sell.”
A Crumbling Empire of Grift
The Trump-Kushner real estate scheme in Belgrade was supposed to be a monument to power and profit—a sleek, $500 million centerpiece rising from the ashes of war. Instead, it’s become something else entirely: a cautionary tale. A symbol of resistance. Proof that even the most connected families on Earth aren’t beyond public scrutiny.
What was pitched as an economic revival has collapsed into scandal. And it didn’t take a lawsuit or a legislative committee to pull back the curtain—it took whistleblowers, heritage defenders, and thousands of furious Serbians who refused to let their history be bulldozed for condos and cash.
Now, President Vučić is scrambling. His usual tactics—tightening his grip on the media, demonizing protesters, waving the nationalist flag—aren’t landing like they used to. There’s a crack in the armor. And as the world watches Serbia’s uprising with growing interest, one question keeps surfacing: Is this the beginning of the end for one of Europe’s last Trump-style strongmen?
If you want to understand the rot behind this moment, rewind to a law that once made American businesses think twice before bribing their way through foreign capitals. The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. It was imperfect, no doubt—but it drew a line. You don’t get to use your passport as a license to exploit.
Trump couldn’t stand that line.
He called the law “ridiculous,” an “unfair burden” on U.S. companies—code, really, for: “It gets in the way of how I do business.” And so he killed it. Quietly. Strategically. With one less legal hurdle, American firms could chase dirty deals with clean hands. What used to be criminal was now just called “business as usual.”
Serbia became a proving ground. With the FCPA gone, Trump’s orbit didn’t need to hide. They could partner with a corrupt regime, target a sacred national landmark, and try to turn it into a branded luxury complex without fear of legal blowback back home. It was deregulation on paper, but something much darker in practice—decriminalized corruption, exported at scale.
Let’s not pretend this was an accident. This was the plan.
When you remove the rules that protect countries from foreign exploitation, this is what you get: billionaires trying to buy history, strongmen cutting deals in the dark, and citizens pushed to the brink.
And now, they’re fighting back.
The streets of Belgrade are filled with people who understand what’s at stake. They’re not just protesting a development deal. They’re rejecting the idea that their country is for sale. That their grief, their memory, their public land can be flipped for a quick buck by a political dynasty from across the ocean.
Trump isn’t exporting democracy. He’s exporting the tools of authoritarian grift: rigged systems, sham deals, and impunity for the well-connected. And Serbia, for now, is where that house of cards is finally starting to fall.
The question isn’t whether the world sees what’s happening. It does. The real question is: what happens when people decide they won’t be complicit anymore?
The Streets Speak
No one knows how this ends. What’s clear is that Serbia has crossed a line—and it won’t be going back. From the ashes of a tragedy, a movement has emerged, fierce and fearless. These aren’t protests for optics. They’re a cry from a nation that’s been lied to, looted, and left behind.
“They thought we’d forget,” said a university student clutching a photograph of one of the canopy victims. “They thought they could build on our graves. But we are the foundation now. And we’re not moving.”
In Belgrade, the people aren’t waiting for permission to reclaim their country. They’re already doing it.
Copyright 2025 FN, NewsRoom.
