Every evening at 5pm a group of demonstrators meets on Republic Square in central Belgrade to protest "against the occupation of Kosovo" by the European Union.

 For these people, the apparently harmless transfer of power from one international administration (the United Nations, which has governed Kosovo since 1999) to another (the EU) - a transfer which is supposed to take place formally in December, but which is already being implemented as EU personnel are even now being deployed to the province - is in fact a matter of principle. The EU treats Kosovo as an independent state, whereas the UN administration is based on a Security Council Resolution which proclaims it to be part of Serbia.

The nightly demonstrations are notable for two things. First, the turnout is very low - perhaps twenty or thirty people in a city of nearly two million. The Western-backed destruction of Yugoslavia has been going on for sixteen long years now (since 1992) and most Serbs are now so exhausted and demoralised by it that they are incapable of offering any further resistance. Second, the demonstrators carry Russian flags and sing the Russian national anthem. Vladimir Putin is said to be the most popular politician in Serbia, and Russia generally is regarded now (by anti-EU Serbs at least) as their only remaining hope.

However understandable, this hope is shortly to be dashed. Ever since the violent overthrow of Slobodan Milosevic on 5 October 2000, Serbia has had an uninterrupted line of pro-Western governments and presidents. This pro-Western orientation has brought Serbia only further sales of the country's economic assets to foreigners, and the further stripping of territory from Belgrade's control. In 2006, Montenegro proclaimed its independence from democratic Serbia, only to be followed by Kosovo this February. Both acts were encouraged by the West. Serbia is therefore damned if she opposes the West (as she did from 1990 to 2000 under Milosevic) and damned if she supports it (as she has done did since 2000 under Prime Ministers Vojislav Kostunica and Zoran Djindjic and the current president, Boris Tadic). No wonder some Serbs look to Russia.
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The present Foreign Minister of Serbia, Vuk Jeremić, said recently in a private meeting with the US State Department officials responsible for Kosovo that his government's only problem was how to find a way of sugaring the bitter bill of Kosovo independence in such a way that Serbian public opinion could be convinced to swallow it.

(John Laughland for RIA Novosti) клик
John Laughland is a British historian and political scientist, Director of Studies at the Institute of Democracy and Cooperation in Paris