Serbia's Deputy Prime Minister has accused Western intelligence services of trying to destabilize his country by supporting months of anti-government protests, Reuters reports.
Alexander Vulin made the accusations after meeting with the director of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service, Sergei Naryshkin.
Vulin said Western powers are plotting to overthrow the Serbian government, which has long enjoyed good relations with Moscow.
"Western intelligence services are trying to organize a "color revolution" and destabilize the Republic of Serbia," he pointed out, referring to the pro-European street riot in 2014. in Ukraine, which ousted the pro-Russian president there.
Tens of thousands of students, backed by teachers, farmers and workers, have been holding daily protests in Serbia since last November, when 15 people died when a train station roof collapsed in the city of Novi Sad.
The protests have become the biggest threat yet to President Aleksandar Vucic's decades-long rule, as many Serbs blame government corruption for the tragedy.
Vulin, an outspoken pro-Russian politician, previously served as head of the Serbian Security and Information Agency, as well as interior and defense ministers.
He heads the Movement of Socialists, a small part of Serbia's ruling coalition loyal to the populist Vucic.
In 2023, the United States sanctioned Vulin for aiding Moscow in "malign" Russian activities, as well as for ties to an arms dealer and a drug trafficking group, which forced him to resign from the Serbian Security and Information Agency.
Vulin maintains close relations with Russian intelligence services. In 2024 he was awarded by both President Vladimir Putin and Alexander Bortnikov, head of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB).
Vulin also said that US sanctions against Serbia's oil industry NIS, majority-owned by Russian gas giant "Gazprom", were also part of a Western conspiracy.
"The sanctions against NIS are part of a hybrid war to overthrow President Vučić and the legitimately elected government," he said.
Serbia is balancing its aspirations to join the European Union with its close relations with Russia, the Serbs' traditional main ally.
Although Belgrade has repeatedly condemned Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, it has never joined international sanctions against Moscow.
To join the EU, Serbia must first eradicate state corruption and widely widespread organized crime, as well as to align its foreign policy with that of the bloc.