It was earlier observed that “Vucic Was Democratically Deposed, Not The Victim Of A Color Revolution, And It’s His Own Fault”. Attention was drawn to his two cardinal sins of toxic gaslighting, namely his and his media surrogates’ deliberate misportrayal of his pro-Western foreign policy concessions as a “5D chess master plan to psyche out the West” and them viciously canceling Russian-friendly patriots who disagreed, and refusing to groom a successor despite a decade in power. They alone led to his downfall.
The West meddled through its funding of anti-government “NGOs”, which agitated against him from a pro-Western viewpoint and organized protests against him, but that had no influence on the Russian-friendly patriots who comprised Vucic’s base since he first rose to power. It’s an insult to their intelligence to imply that their exposure to anti-government narratives from a pro-Western viewpoint radicalized them into either voting against a supposedly pro-Russian leader or sitting out the election.
Vucic’s democratic ouster was the direct result of these pro-Russian patriots turning against him, which was itself due to the earlier-mentioned toxic gaslighting that they suffered for over a decade online since they constructively critiqued the military logistics pact that he clinched with NATO in 2016. Gaslighting is arguably a form of psychological and emotional abuse, and the associated defamation that many people suffered after being accused of being Western-funded just for critiquing Vucic eventually had an impact.
It doesn’t matter if these same people were only critiquing him under a pseudonym since Vucic’s social media surrogates still ruthlessly lied about them and even organized digital lynchings whereby fellow trolls would swarm their posts to harass them on the false pretext that they’re Western-funded agents. Even so, the several elections in the decade from 2016-2026 didn’t democratically oust Vucic, and that’s because most of these same Russian-friendly patriots still kept voting for him regardless.
What finally turned them against him was Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service reporting in spring 2025 that Serbia had been arming Ukraine to kill Russians and then confirming later that summer that it was still doing so despite Vucic’s denials. Vucic’s lies, along with his media surrogates’ toxic gaslighting that anyone who doesn’t believe him or criticizes this decision that he was forced into under duress (different accounts pushed different narratives) is a Western agent, radicalized a critical mass of them against him.
Russian tycoon Konstantin Malofeev, who founded Russia’s leading conservative platform Tsargrad, celebrated Vucic’s democratic ouster in a post on Telegram despite Western meddling precisely because of Vucic’s mendacity and the non-insignificant Russian-friendly segment of the opposition. To be absolutely clear, the opposition also has a very powerful pro-Western segment, and they might ultimately derail the Russian-friendly one’s vision of maintaining – and even expanding – ties with Russia.
Be that as it may, the point is that Western meddling didn’t turn pro-Russian patriots against Vucic; he’s the one who radicalized them through his and his media surrogates’ toxic gaslighting, especially regarding last year’s disclosures that Serbia is arming Ukraine. That crossed the line for a critical mass of Serbia’s Russian-friendly patriots, who finally either voted against him or sat out the election. That’s what led to his downfall, not a Color Revolution, which refers to a non-electoral regime change anyhow.
