Serbia's perfidious recipes in New York

(Vučić's moralizing at the General Assembly as pressure on the West)

There was once a Finnish minister who had conceived the packaging for his boss's terror and 30 years later, in the center of world diplomacy, attempted to "nail" those who stopped terror, ethnic cleansing and genocide in Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo.   

Will the West allow Vučić's story of the world on fire and the "culprit" who ignited its turmoil?

Putin's "European" spokesman

It doesn't matter if Croats, Muslims and Albanians are killed, slaughtered and raped, stopping Serbia was the "sin" of the West that has ruined the international system. This is the subtext of Aleksandar Vučić at the UN General Assembly, with the "lesson" for small countries against the "deception" of big powers (predsednik.rs, 23.09.2026). He did not only spin Kosovo in the rhetoric of inversion for Serbia as a victim during the '90s and from the NATO bombing in 1999. 

He also accused Croatia of "reviving Nazism" and "pride in its Nazi past", although he received a quick response from Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic, slamming the glorification and state funeral for Ratko Mladic. "A denigrating campaign that even he himself does not believe in, let alone the international community. Every such statement is another step away from Serbia's values ​​and membership in the European Union" (HRT, 24.09.2026). 

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Albin Kurti, at Kaja Kallas' lunch with the leaders of the Western Balkans, without mentioning it directly, said that "Kosovo should not and cannot remain hostage to a state that protects and rewards the criminals of this century, glorifies those of the end of the last century, denies and hides crimes and refuses to cooperate in clarifying the cases of those who disappeared by force, and continues the administrative ethnic cleansing against Albanians in the Presheva Valley" (OPM, 24.09.2026).

However, by avoiding the truth about crimes against humanity, genocide, rape and ethnic cleansing during the wars in the former Yugoslavia, sealed by the UN justice itself (ICTY) with the indictment and trial against Milosevic (Prosecutor v. Slobodan Milosevic et al., Case No. IT-99-37-PT), as well as the final decisions for dozens of his political, military and institutional subordinates (Sainovic et al., Appeal Judgment, 23.01.2014; Final Decision for Ojdanic, 31.01.2013), Vučić used the UN General Assembly to outline the project of the "Serbian World", with the recipes of "victimization", "injustice" of NATO in 1999. He claimed that Serbia has fulfilled all obligations from the Brussels Agreement, but forgot that it had seriously violated it with the attack in Banjska (EEAS, 24.09.2023) and violated its spirit there again, thanking the states that have not recognized Kosovo (Agreement on the path to normalisation between Kosovo and Serbia, 27.02.2027).

Meanwhile, in the role of Putin's "European spokesman", in order to sound more convincing as a "European" under the pretense of "neutrality", he told Western countries that they had lost the moral right to demand the territorial integrity of Ukraine, because they had become part of the effort to take "14 percent" of the territory from Serbia.

Flattery in the service of the "Serbian World"

According to him, NATO bombing and the recognition of Kosovo's independence opened "Pandora's Box", violated the UN Charter and created the standard that is destroying the international order today. Immediately after Kosovo, he expanded the map of "threats" in the region, with accusations against Croatia of "resurrection of Nazism" and "pride in the Nazi past", using Jasenovac as a reference to Serbian victimization during World War II. 

Through historical shifts in the service of the metanarrative about Serbia’s “right,” he played the two Americas card, labeling the Clinton administration as “destructive” and supporting the Trump administration as hope for a “more just order” that would favor Serbia. Thus, the narrative inversion about Serbia’s “moral authority” in today’s turbulent world is built on long-standing frameworks, aligned with Russia (NATO aggression, the West with double standards), but claiming “neutrality” towards the current geopolitical conflict, fueled by the “injustice” of 1999. 
The historical alliance with America, the Ustasa crimes against Serbs, and the "sin" with Kosovo are the selective links that Vučić uses for "permanent victimization," while bypassing that of the Milošević period and Serbia's responsibility for repression, crimes, massacres, and genocide, as the cause of the international reaction. 

It does not tell the General Assembly why the funeral for Ratko Mladic was held with state honors, despite the harsh reaction of the EU, which they claim to be integrated into, and why it still continues to defend Radojcic, despite repeated calls from the US, EU, and NATO to prosecute him after the attack in Banjska. 

He cannot answer these questions while avoiding Milošević, while avoiding Milošević, because he does not distance himself from the goals of the policy of "Greater Serbia". Not only did he affirm this himself in 2018 (predsednik.rs, 11.09.2018), but because he continued to retain Minister Paunović after the rehabilitative statements for Milošević in 2026. 

In this context, the homage to Mladić is the line that explains the strategic evolution of the project, camouflaged in the concept of the “Serbian World” and adapted to the current context of geopolitical rivalry. This is the framework within which Vučić’s speech should be analyzed, as “moral” pressure on the West, “justification” of Putin and “legitimization” of Serbia’s chauvinistic goals.

Revisionist “pressure” on the West  

The facts are not important, their interpretation is, said the 20th century American philosopher George Mead (Symbolic Interactionism of George Herbert Mead, in “EM Griffin, A First Look at Communication Theory , 8th Ed., New York, 2012). They do not speak for themselves, so reframing them in the function of Serbia's narrative is what Vučić is trying to do. 

Calculating on the possibilities of the digital revolution and the features of "post-truth", ICTY documents (; Prosecutor v. Ratko Mladic, Appeal Judgement, Case No. MICT-13-56-A; Prosecutor v. Vlastimir Dordevic, Case No.: IT-05-87/1-A) or contemporary reports from international organizations such as Human Rights Watch (Humanitarian Law Violations in Kosovo, 01.10.1998; A Week of Terror in Drenica, 1999; Under Orders, War Crimes in Kosovo, 2001), Amnesty International (A Decade of Unheeded Warnings, 1999), etc., not only "stand silent" in drawers and archives, but can also be "overlooked" by the attention of changing political generations. 

For this reason, the continuous communication of facts, with the sole meaning proven by justice and documented by the media, is the best formula for deconstructing Vučić's "narrative trap", designed for maximum effect in the context of current concerns regarding the international conflict. 

So, you cannot use international law to frame NATO bombings as "aggression", after hundreds of massacres and what the UN itself has proven to be an operation to cover up crimes, with mass graves in Batajnica, Petrovo Selo (ICTY, Judgment against Dordevic, 2011), Rudnica, etc., to the recent identifications of remains found in Kalludra and Jabuka in Zubin Potok, most of which are still in process (REL, 19.09.2026). 

You cannot use international law to frame Kosovo's independence as the "sin" of the West, after terror, systematic repression, genocide, and what the UN justice system itself has deemed "legitimate" (ICJ, 22.07.2010). 

And, you cannot use “neutrality” to frame Serbia as an “ally of America,” while continuing its strategic alignment with Russia and China in militarization and revisionist goals (RFE/RL, 07.01.2026; European Commission, Serbia 2025 Report; ), glorifying Mladic and defending Radojcic, defying the US itself, NATO demands, or EU reprimands (Reporteri, 24.09.2026), and undermining American interests as defined by the national emergency act regarding the Western Balkans (The American Presidency Project, 22.06.2026).  

Therefore, his attempt to obscure the truth, with President Clinton as a "destroyer" of the international order, with Serbia as an "ally of America", with flattery towards President Trump and with Croatian "Nazism", is not only a perfidious outline of the "Serbian World" project, but also a legitimization of Russian aggression against Ukraine. A kind of "moralizing" message that carries the implicit meaning that "the injustice of the West" has "forced" Putin.

(The author is director of the Institute for Hybrid Warfare Studies “Octopus”)