Political scientist Anđelko Milardović analyzes threats from Belgrade for Slobodna Dalmacija, questioning whether the Serbian president intends to mobilize his citizens who come to Croatia as an EU member.
The metaphor of the "second half," which Aleksandar Vučić has used for years to threaten his neighbors, echoed once again from Mrkonjić Grad in Bosnia and Herzegovina. This time, Croatia was in his sights, and the message, though wrapped in a call for peace, clearly alluded to the possibility of a new conflict. However, Croatian experts see such statements as a shot in the dark, primarily intended to mobilize the nationalist electorate in Serbia ahead of the upcoming elections.
"If we start from the premises of political realism, geopolitics, and relations in Europe, this is a shot in the dark, an empty gun serving to mobilize the nationalist masses in Serbia in the context of their internal turmoil and upcoming elections. Vučić plans to follow Putin's model and swap himself with his own Medvedev," political scientist Prof. Dr. Anđelko Milardović from the Institute for European and Globalization Studies in Split told Slobodna Dalmacija. He added that Serbia lost the "first half" at a time when Croatia, militarily speaking, was not a serious threat, thereby permanently shattering the myth of Serbian heroism.
Milardović believes that under current circumstances, with Croatia as a member of the European Union and NATO, threatening war is utterly unreasonable. "The man is, in Krleža's words, on the edge of sanity," he commented. He also assessed that the Serbian president has remained consistent with the "Titoist model" of balancing between Moscow and Brussels, failing to realize that the world has changed. "He is a permanent disruptive factor in the Balkans. He thrives solely on conflict and confrontation, unaware that the mindset today has completely shifted. Serbs come to Croatia, an EU member, to vacation and work. Does Vučić think he can mobilize them?" Milardović asked.
Unlike the situation in 1990, when then-Serbian President Slobodan Milošević had a strong lever in the form of rebel Serbs in the areas of SAO Krajina, western and eastern Slavonia, Baranja, and western Syrmia, Vučić today has no such lever in Croatia. The vast majority of Croatian citizens of Serbian nationality accept Croatia as their state, and in the last parliamentary elections, Milorad Pupovac, president of the SDSS, convincingly won in the minority constituency, not Vučić's candidates.
While direct threats are deemed unrealistic, experts warn of another kind of danger coming from Serbia: sophisticated manipulations on social media. "The internet is becoming a battlefield, even more so than traditional media. Perception is created on the internet," said Marijan Palić, an expert in political marketing. He noted a large number of condemnations of the military-police operation "Storm" on platforms like TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram, to which Croatian citizens responded with a counter-campaign using real profiles.
Palić recalled information about the existence of so-called bot farms linked to the ruling party in Serbia. He described how they operate: "They employ a lot of people. Every day, they come to the building, 'check in' at the entrance as if they've arrived at work, sit down at their computers, and there they have instructions on which username they must register under and what they need to comment on that day on portals, TikTok, Facebook... In this way, they try to control the narrative and amplify messages from their media, as well as defame others."
As an example of this danger, he cited a case on a Croatian portal where a comment in English about Croatian politics accidentally left the instruction "translate this into Croatian," indicating the use of tools like ChatGPT by foreign bots. Palić warns that such activities can also threaten national security, recalling Russian influence on the elections in Romania. "National security is practically threatened here too," he concluded.
