Russia & The Serbian Coup Attempt- Kremlin Targets Vučić Over Ukraine Arms

Russ­ian influ­ence oper­a­tions in the Ser­bian coup attempt demon­strate Moscow’s sophis­ti­cat­ed hybrid war­fare tac­tics against waver­ing allies. On June 26, 2025, the Lans­ing Insti­tute revealed how Russ­ian intel­li­gence ser­vices orches­trat­ed a desta­bi­liza­tion cam­paign against Pres­i­dent Alek­san­dar Vučić, uti­liz­ing deep net­works with­in Ser­bia’s mil­i­tary, secu­ri­ty ser­vices, and Ortho­dox Church while deploy­ing infor­ma­tion war­fare and para­mil­i­tary assets in response to Bel­grade’s covert weapons ship­ments to Ukraine. The arti­cle begins:

The attempt­ed coup in Ser­bia rep­re­sents a crit­i­cal turn­ing point in Balkan pol­i­tics, expos­ing frag­ile domes­tic insti­tu­tions and Serbia’s del­i­cate bal­ance between the EU and Rus­sia. While the plot was swift­ly neu­tral­ized, the event rais­es urgent ques­tions about Russ­ian sub­ver­sion tac­tics, the tim­ing amid region­al insta­bil­i­ty, and strik­ing sim­i­lar­i­ties with the recent coup attempt in Arme­nia. The fall­out could reshape Serbia’s for­eign align­ments and secu­ri­ty pos­ture for years to come.

Read more: https://lansinginstitute.org/2025/06/26/the-coup-attempt-in-serbia-kremlin-influence-balkan-instability-and-strategic-fallout/

Key Points

• Russ­ian GRU and FSB exploit­ed infil­trat­ed net­works with­in Ser­bia’s mil­i­tary and BIA secu­ri­ty ser­vices, lever­ag­ing offi­cers trained in Rus­sia and Ortho­dox Church con­nec­tions to coor­di­nate the coup attempt.
• Moscow deployed infor­ma­tion war­fare through RT Balkan and Sput­nik Ser­bia, ampli­fy­ing anti-EU sen­ti­ment while Ortho­dox cler­gy warned of “West­ern spir­i­tu­al occu­pa­tion” as part of coor­di­nat­ed messaging.
• Russ­ian intel­li­gence mobi­lized para­mil­i­tary vet­er­ans from Koso­vo and Bosn­ian wars along­side far-right groups, repli­cat­ing influ­ence oper­a­tion tac­tics pre­vi­ous­ly used in the failed Arme­nia coup attempt.
• The desta­bi­liza­tion cam­paign rep­re­sents Rus­si­a’s “con­trolled chaos” strat­e­gy, where Moscow pre­emp­tive­ly betrays allies show­ing inde­pen­dence to main­tain depen­dent client states rather than equal partnerships.

Serbia’s Central Role in Russian Influence Operations Across the Balkans

Russ­ian polit­i­cal war­fare in the Balka­ns has esca­lat­ed into a sophis­ti­cat­ed cam­paign that lever­ages Ser­bia as Moscow’s pri­ma­ry region­al ally to desta­bi­lize south­east­ern Europe while Ukraine remains under assault. Ser­bia’s Pres­i­dent Alek­san­dar Vučić has cul­ti­vat­ed deep ties with Putin, uti­liz­ing Russ­ian state media plat­forms like RT and Sput­nik to ampli­fy pro-Russ­ian nar­ra­tives that por­tray West­ern inter­ven­tion as for­eign inter­fer­ence while pro­mot­ing tra­di­tion­al Ortho­dox val­ues and pan-Slav­ic iden­ti­ty. This infor­ma­tion war­fare strat­e­gy has proven remark­ably effec­tive, with Ser­bia repeat­ed­ly mov­ing troops to Kosovo’s bor­ders to cre­ate war scares and pro­vid­ing Rus­sia with lever­age over NATO expan­sion in the region.

Con­cur­rent­ly, Ser­bia serves as a cru­cial sanc­tions-bust­ing con­duit, with com­pa­nies trans­fer­ring over $71 mil­lion to Rus­sia since Feb­ru­ary 2022, while the gov­ern­ment issues pass­ports to Krem­lin-linked oli­garchs and main­tains exclu­sive depen­dence on Russ­ian ener­gy sup­plies. Rus­si­a’s influ­ence extends beyond direct gov­ern­ment coop­er­a­tion through reli­gious net­works, par­tic­u­lar­ly the Ser­bian Ortho­dox Church’s align­ment with Moscow’s posi­tions on Koso­vo, and sup­port for para­mil­i­tary groups and nation­al­ist orga­ni­za­tions that chal­lenge West­ern-backed peace processes.

Despite its EU mem­ber­ship aspi­ra­tions, Ser­bia con­tin­ues to refuse to impose sanc­tions on Rus­sia. Recent US Trea­sury actions tar­get­ing Ser­bian com­pa­nies for mil­i­tary exports to Moscow high­light how Russ­ian influ­ence oper­a­tions have suc­cess­ful­ly trans­formed Ser­bia into both a strate­gic spoil­er of Euro-Atlantic inte­gra­tion and an oper­a­tional base for broad­er Balkan destabilization.

Exter­nal References:

1. Coun­ter­ing Rus­si­a’s Influ­ence Oper­a­tions in the Balkans
2. Rus­si­a’s Influ­ence in the Balkans
3. US Sanc­tions Com­pa­nies from Ser­bia, Mon­tene­gro for Mil­i­tary Exports to Russia

Disclaimer

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) employs AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing gen­er­at­ing sum­maries of news items, the intro­duc­tion, key points, and often the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, images are AI-gen­er­at­ed and intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.