@migrutinovic.bsky.social
Historian & IR scholar at the Institute of European Studies, Belgrade #academicsky #skystorians #IRsky https://igrutinovic.wordpress.com/
A Hillbilly EULogy, so to speak.
11.12.2025 10:54 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0MAGA->MEGA against the EU will shape to be quite an existential challenge:
"Austria, Hungary, Italy, and Poland are listed as countries the U.S. should “work more with…with the goal of pulling them away from the [European Union].”"
Today’s local elections in Serbia – in Mionica, Negotin and Sečanj – were a snapshot of that reality: fraud, intimidation, assaults on observers, and mobs operating with police complicity.
We believe democracy cannot survive without accountability. Vučić’s regime threatens both.
Why is Vučić afraid of national elections? Because when he’s not sending thugs to beat up students, young people, citizens, MPs or journalists – as he did today in Mionica – he knows he can’t win.
His party is increasingly isolated, holding on to power through violence, fear and voter manipulation.
Since I'm in Florence, been reading the outlet and got hooked on local darkwave bands from the 1980s.
Starting with Diaframma, on to Litfiba, Neon, Pankow....
www.theflorentine.net/2025/11/19/d...
Activism without lasting forms of collective organisation
On 19 November, 16.00 CET, join a lecture by Anton Jäger @ox.ac.uk on his concept of "hyperpolitics", describing today's increasing politicisation leading to few political consequences 👉 loom.ly/deT9Uyc
Organised by @inthiseui.bsky.social
Join us next Monday for an @eui-adgcentre.bsky.social (hybrid) seminar with exciting presentations by @migrutinovic.bsky.social (Yugoslavia-EEC relations, 1980s) & Jonah Berger (early steps towards creation of a European foreign service, 1990s).
Registration here: www.eui.eu/events?id=58...
💬 How were the EEC–Yugoslavia relations? And how did the EC build its own diplomatic corps?
Join us on 17 November for our next research seminar with @migrutinovic.bsky.social (Institute of European Studies, Belgrade) and Jonah Berger (EUI) exploring Europe’s external relations.
🔗 loom.ly/15xC2tE
He is looking for a way into the Trump circle. But, funnily enough, Trumpists and MAGAs have kept him at arms length away despite his various attempts to mingle with them and buy himself in.
Next gvmt should annul this corrupt lex specialis as a matter of priority.
Vučić is hoping for a magical US-RU deal on the issue, and looks to ride Orban's coat tails on this. There's practically zero chance of that happening.
He and the gvmt still refuse the idea of takeover of NIS ownership from Gazprom, thus increasing the chances of major internal oil crisis.
And they're gonna stack it with friendly* academics, to create a safe haven for pro-SNS party line of thought.
The first, interim dean will be a party loyalist, of course.
Serbian gvmt has decided to create a "Faculty of Serbian Studies" by cutting out depts of history, Serbian, and Russian(!?) language out of University of Niš.
It has done so despite the tacit "no" from the uni and departmental councils.
/1
www.danas.rs/vesti/drustv...
It seems that internal* Russian repackaging of ownership of US-sanctioned oil business (Lukoil but, implicitly also Gazprom, and for Serbian NIS) is a non-starter for lifting the sanctions.
07.11.2025 07:43 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
My interview for "Glas Slavonije" (Croatia), with Darko Jerković, on Serbian integration into the EU.
The point is fairly simple - any progress now is practically inconceivable under this government.
Reasons are many, but they merge to a straightforward answer.
www.glas-slavonije.hr/magazin/2025...
👋 Meet our new Fernand Braudel Fellow, @migrutinovic.bsky.social , joining us thanks to the #EUIWidening Programme!
His project explores the political and economic relations between Yugoslavia and the ECC in the 1980s.
Find out more about our Fellowships 👉 loom.ly/u_hjJE4
YES! THIS on GenAI!
Please read this absolutely splendid piece of writing that had me cheering, a little bit weepy, and writing in the margins:
"An extraordinary amount of money is spent by the AI industry to ensure that acquiescence is the only plausible response. But marketing is not destiny."
From Oct 1 the US Gov will levy sanctions against the Serbian de facto oil monopoly NIS, as majority of its shares are owned by Gazprom and connected companies.
For months the SR gov has refused to nationalise the company (as Vučić values the RU connection) and RU side has refused any buyout.
This actually isn't a building in New/Novi Belgrade, this is the "Eastern Gate" or "Rudo" complex.
But stiil, brutalism par excellence.
maps.app.goo.gl/HtvYfJoY9x3B...
Serbian students are our nominees for the #SakharovPrize!
Since the tragic Novi Sad railway station accident, these courageous young people have led peaceful protests for a free & democratic 🇷🇸
Their fight reflects the EU’s core principles & inspires beyond Serbia’s borders
Serbia’s Vučić brands European Green Party officials ‘scum’ amid deepening unrest
06.09.2025 18:36 — 👍 2 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 0And late last night, president Vučić called the @europeangreens.eu MEPs the "worst European scum" while fuming against the student/civic protestors at the University of Novi Sad, attacked and tear-gassed by the riot police and armed SNS party thugs.
New levels of vitriol.
n1info.rs/vesti/vucic-...
legitimate reasons (collapse of the governing coalition, inability to form a majority etc) but for the perpetual campaign that kept the party on the line, media disciplined and institutions captured, to bolster the populist appeal, with immeasurable irregularities on each and every election cycle.
29.08.2025 20:53 — 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
In his letter to the @financialtimes.com Serbian president Vučić claims that "democracies cannot rewrite electoral timetables ... Doing so would be destabilising, costly, and harmful".
That's rich given that he and his party have initiated 5 parliamentary elections in 9 years (2014-2023) without /1
The gvmt will welcome these comments, as it is showing its party base - right wing, pro-Russian - that it has the support of an "ally". And this is the best gvmt Russia can get in Serbia.
To Western ears, the gvmt sings a tune of a "centrist gvmt trying to manage a complicated social situation".
The Russian ambo to Serbia with strongest comments against the ongoing anti-gvmt protests thus far, with intentionally vague and sweeping accusations that the protests are run by "the West", for "Belgrade to lose control of the situation" etc.
www.politika.rs/sr/clanak/69...
Nekoliko mojih komentara o tezi o "građanskom ratu" u Srbiji trenutno:
www.masina.rs/ne-ovo-nije-...
And also in Le Monde, an editorial firmly critical of Vučić.
www.lemonde.fr/en/opinion/a...
So, probably the first editorial of major international daily dealing with Vučić, and calling for pressure on him by the EU and UK, as "Vučić has to be pushed to be more accountable and hold genuinely fair elections".
AV is likely not on the breaking point on that, but still...
A good recap on the current vawe of clashes between civic protestants and the police and SNS party supporters.
#Serbia #protests
www.masina.rs/eng/tear-gas...
"Soon after its founding, however, it became apparent that the EUI’s splendid digs might be distracting its scholars. As one insider explained to Charlemagne: “Left to their own devices, the academics began producing studies of the wool trade in 15th-century Flanders and suchlike.” He was joking—up to a point. A search for recent articles on the EUI’s database produced a list headed by “Silk consumption and dressing practices in late-medieval Catalonia”. In 1993 the university set up a new division, the Robert Schuman Centre, to keep things forward-looking and relevant, but with mixed success. In 2017 a School of Transnational Governance was founded in the hope that this would finally do the trick."
Tell me you don't understand the purpose of humanities research without telling me you don't understand the purpose of humanities research
@economist.com @eui-history.bsky.social
www.economist.com/europe/2025/...
