Following Vladimir Putin's example, he failed to elect a prime minister. Serbian strongman Vucic lost power and blamed foreign interference.

Serbian populist strongman Aleksandar Vucic has dominated the Balkan country's politics for 14 years. This political veteran has always been able to easily defeat his political opponents in the past, and he thought he would be able to do the same this time. Before the vote on the 25th, he followed the example of his ally, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and resigned from the presidency to compete for the prime ministership. Subsequently, he launched a fierce campaign offensive, using the national media to carry out around-the-clock positive propaganda and attacking opponents, and even threw money at voters, promising to increase pensions, build new roads and provide cheap medicines.

The Associated Press reported, however, that all these methods failed. After the election results came out, Vucic admitted that his "Serbian Progressive Party" (SNS) was defeated by a grassroots movement initiated by university students. This diverse youth movement sent a clear message: Rampant corruption, nepotism and organized crime under Vucic's rule were eroding the country, which resonated with voters.

But Vucic was still unwilling to be outdone and blamed foreign interference for his defeat. "I want people to know that this is evidence of a revolution that they launched with the direct support of different European countries and the American deep state that opposed President Trump," he said.

In a political career that spans more than 30 years, Vucic has transformed from an ultranationalist who supported aggression against non-Serbs in the former Yugoslavia to a populist seeking a balance between powers. He has successively held the positions of deputy prime minister, prime minister and president, and transformed the originally symbolic presidential position into the center of power in the country. Dejan Pavlovic, a professor of political science at the University of Belgrade, described his rule as a "textbook-level dictatorship" and pointed out that Vucic controlled the media and the judiciary and created a new class of social elites through a combination of grace and power.

During the war in the 1990s, he advocated the establishment of a "Greater Serbia" that included the Serbian minority areas of Croatia and Bosnia. He once threatened in Congress: "For every Serb killed in the Bosnian War, 100 Bosnian Muslims must be buried with him." This policy is widely considered to be the main cause of the bloody conflict that killed more than 100,000 people and displaced millions. But he later argued that his statement had been taken out of context.

When he served as Minister of Information in the late 1990s, Vucic even imposed heavy fines or shut down media outlets that criticized then-President Slobodan Milosevic. It was not until the eve of his party's election victory in 2012 that he turned to professing support for a pro-EU position.

During his administration, Vucic positioned himself as pro-European and pro-Russian, and was also an admirer of Trump. However, in the run-up to this decisive election, he re-embraced his far-right roots and turned once again to Putin in an effort to salvage his wavering vote base. Last month, he even ignored EU objections and held a hero's funeral in Belgrade for former Bosnian Serb army commander Ratko Mladic, who was sentenced by a United Nations court for genocide.

Vucic's ouster triggered mixed reactions in Russia. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov expressed his hope on the 26th that the post-Vucic government can maintain friendly relations with Russia. Previously, despite Serbia's formal application to join the EU, Vucic refused to participate in the EU's sanctions against Moscow in response to the war in Ukraine.