Serbia’s election-winning Student List movement says it will not impose sanctions on Russia

The Student List, the protest movement that won Serbia’s parliamentary elections last weekend, does not plan to impose sanctions on Russia, according to movement representative and sociologist Jovo Bakić.

“We respect Russia as a great power and as our historically important partner, and in many cases a protector. There will be no change on this issue. […] Sanctions imposed on Russia by little Serbia would change nothing, but symbolically they would be very bad,” Bakić said on the Russian propaganda outlet RT Balkan.

He said the Student List would focus first on domestic reforms, including overhauls of the Interior Ministry and the education system.

The movement had previously said it opposed sanctions against Russia. Aleksandar Vučić, who has dominated Serbian politics for more than a decade and resigned as president on September 27 to head his party’s list in the parliamentary elections, had claimed that the Student List would reverse its position and impose sanctions on Russia as soon as this spring if it won.

In Serbia’s snap parliamentary elections held on Sunday, the opposition Student List, which grew out of the country’s mass protests, is projected to have won approximately 140 of the 250 seats in parliament. Vučić’s Serbian Progressive Party is projected to have won around 105.