Serbia Election Results: The Student Movement That Unseated Vucic, and What Moscow Just Lost

In brief: Serbia's student-led movement won Sunday's parliamentary election outright, taking 52.54 percent of the vote and a projected 140 of 250 seats on the highest turnout since Yugoslavia broke apart, and Aleksandar Vucic conceded the same night. It is the second time in six months that a Kremlin-friendly European government has fallen at the ballot box, with direct consequences for Serbia's gas, arms and EU files, and for Ukraine.

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The Serbia election results arrived from the least likely messenger: the man who lost. On Sunday evening, October 25, Aleksandar Vucic went on camera with what he called a brief statement to the nation and read out the numbers himself. "Based on a stratified sample, it is clear that we have lost this election. The student blockade list won," the Kyiv Independent quoted him saying. Reuters reported celebrations in the streets across the country.

The Serbian Progressive Party had run the state since 2012, with Vucic as prime minister or president since 2014. A movement registered as a citizens' group only on September 9 ended that era in one round.

Serbia election results: the numbers behind the earthquake

The State Election Commission's preliminary count, reported Monday by Al Jazeera with 8,077 of 8,392 polling stations processed, gives the Student List 52.54 percent against 39.29 percent for Vucic's United Serbia list. That projects to 140 seats in the 250-seat National Assembly, an outright majority past the 126-seat threshold, with United Serbia on 103, the Alliance of Vojvodina Hungarians on 3, an Albanian bloc on 2, and two more minority-list seats. Final results are still pending.

Preliminary turnout reached 68.78 percent, which Al Jazeera and Reuters both describe as the highest since the elections around Yugoslavia's breakup in 1992. Monitors still logged problems: observer group CRTA recorded pressure on voters or election workers at almost a third of the 500 stations it watched, per Al Jazeera. None of it changed the outcome.

Vucic had resigned the presidency on September 27 to run for prime minister. Parliament speaker Ana Brnabic holds the presidency temporarily and must call a presidential election by December 27, per Al Jazeera.

The Student List: the movement born at Novi Sad station

The collapsed canopy of the Novi Sad railway station. The November 1, 2024 disaster killed 16 people and set off the protests. Photo: Mishyac, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Everything traces back to November 1, 2024, when the concrete canopy of the newly renovated Novi Sad railway station collapsed and killed 16 people. Students read the disaster as the price of corrupted construction oversight and blockaded their universities. For nearly two years the protests outlasted every attempt to wait them out.

The electoral vehicle came late. The Student List fielded 250 candidates and, per Meduza, not one of them is a student: the movement recruited doctors, professors, scientists and athletes it judged able to run institutions, saying, "We weren't looking for people who would look best on billboards." The list is topped by Ilija Srdanovic, a cardiologist and professor at the University of Novi Sad's Faculty of Medicine, whom Al Jazeera calls the most likely prime minister, alongside former central bank governor Dejan Soskic. Its 11-point platform leads with anti-corruption, an independent judiciary and education, under the slogan "Serbia or the Mafia."

"Students won, and with them also a hope that Serbia can be a country of justice, freedom and dignity," candidate Radomir Saicic said at the movement's headquarters, per AP.

What Moscow just lost in Belgrade

Aleksandar Vucic at a working lunch hosted by then US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. File photo: US Department of State, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Vladimir Putin had endorsed Vucic, and the Kremlin spent Monday doing damage control. "We greatly appreciate the contribution that Mr Vucic has made to the development of our bilateral relations," spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, per Reuters, adding that Moscow expects Vucic to stay active in politics and urging the incoming government to accept that "cooperation with Russia is in Serbia's interests, because it benefits Serbia." On whether Moscow would court the new leadership: "it takes two to tango."

The stakes are concrete. Gazprom supplies Serbia with roughly 2.2 billion cubic meters of gas a year at below-market prices, and Russia's stake in NIS, the company running Serbia's only refinery, is being sold to Hungary's MOL while the country leans on US sanctions waivers to keep importing crude, per a Reuters explainer. Serbia is an EU candidate that never joined sanctions on Russia, a stance Washington has been loosening its own line on since the Trump Russia diesel deal opened a waiver mid-war this month.

In the campaign's final week Vucic told Russian interviewer Ksenia Sobchak that a loss would mean sanctions on Russia "within 10 days of the new government's formation," and after conceding he repeated that he expects them by March or April 2027, per Meduza. The winners say otherwise. "We have taken the position that sanctions against Russia will not be imposed," Student List representative Aleksandar Baucal said in mid-October, while allowing that coordination with the EU is "a matter of negotiation." The movement's platform calls the Russian energy relationship an acute economic dependency rather than a geopolitical alignment, per the Reuters explainer.

The pattern should worry Moscow more than the result. In April, Viktor Orban lost Hungary after 16 years to Peter Magyar's Tisza party. Six months later Vucic followed. Reuters framed Sunday as Russia losing another important European partner, the second this year to fall to a new movement rather than the old opposition it knew how to handle.

What the Serbia result means for Ukraine

Volodymyr Zelensky welcomed the result within a day. "There have been changes in Serbia, a victory of the Student List. And this is clearly a new chapter in the history of the country and its people," he posted on X on October 26, per Ukrinform, wishing Serbia "warm relations with the European community" and saying Ukraine is ready to expand cooperation.

The ammunition file is more complicated. Serbian-made shells have reached Ukraine through intermediaries, and under Russian pressure Vucic halted ammunition exports in June 2025, per RFE/RL, before Vucic said in late 2025 that Belgrade did not object to European buyers purchasing Serbian ammunition for Ukraine, per Ukrainska Pravda. The Student List platform would end arms exports to war zones outright, including through the Western intermediaries that pass them to Ukraine, per the Reuters explainer. Kyiv gains a friendlier Belgrade and may still lose the shells.

On Europe, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen congratulated the winners and offered support for rule-of-law reforms, per Al Jazeera. The students want every negotiating cluster closed and domestic reforms done before putting EU membership to a public vote, and their position that Kosovo is temporarily occupied territory collides directly with the normalization the accession track requires, per the Reuters explainer.

Why it matters

Protesters fill Belgrade's Slavija Square during the December 22, 2024 student rally, one of the mass demonstrations that built the movement. Photo: Voice of America, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Russia's position in Europe is being decided on two tracks at once. On one, Washington negotiates directly with Moscow over Ukraine, from the Oslo peace talks to Witkoff's meeting with Putin at Constantine Palace. On the other, European electorates keep removing the leaders Moscow counted on. Serbia was the Kremlin's firmest foothold in the Balkans: an EU candidate that took discounted gas and refused sanctions through four war years. A Belgrade run by anti-corruption technocrats does not have to be anti-Russian to be a loss for Moscow. It only has to price the relationship honestly.

What to watch

Final results and whether the 140-seat projection holds. The prime minister pick, with Srdanovic the name to beat. The constitutional clock: the new assembly must be seated within 30 days of final results and a government formed within 90 days after that, and Brnabic must call a presidential election by December 27, per Al Jazeera. The winter files force the Russia question fast: the Gazprom contract, the NIS sale and the US waivers all land on the new government's desk. And whether Vucic, who the Kremlin expects to stay active in politics, rebuilds in opposition.

The channel will track the handover in Belgrade and what it does to the Balkan balance. For the fastest updates, join us on t.me/TheLeaflet.

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Sources

Al Jazeera and AP (Oct 25 and Oct 26, 2026), Reuters (Oct 26, 2026), Kyiv Independent (Oct 25, 2026), Meduza (Oct 26, 2026), Euronews (Oct 25, 2026), Reuters explainer via RTE (Oct 26, 2026), Ukrinform (Oct 26, 2026), RFE/RL (June 2025), Ukrainska Pravda (Nov 2025). Photos: Voice of America, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons; Mishyac, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons; US Department of State, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.