This is popular front a podcast focused on the niche details of modern warfare and

underreported conflict with me Jake Hanrahan.

Today we're speaking to Maria Ristich.

She's a regional director of the Bulkin Investigative Reporting Network

and she's going to be explaining to us what is actually going on on the ground

with the protests in Serbia.

Now there's been a lot of lazy reporting to be honest.

The West is kind of saying oh yeah these are just coronavirus lockdowns people are

clashing with the police because they don't want to go back into lockdown that's

actually not true the coronavirus has been kind of used by the increasingly

authoritarian government in Serbia to put more control on the people.

The police have been incredibly violent so Maria is going to explain to us this very

confusion situation on the ground in Serbia. If you like what we're doing, please help

Popular Front keep moving forward. Go to Patreon.com slash Popular Front.

So yeah, so as I was just saying, like the media in Western Europe and the US are kind of framing these

clashes in Serbia as like, oh, it's coronavirus protests, they don't want to be locked down.

Now, if you do five minutes research, you see there's a lot more to it.

But maybe you can tell us, you know, from your perspective, why is this happening right now?

Well, the rise of the COVID cases definitely provoked people to go out on the streets

and not just the rise but more the response of the government on the rise of the COVID cases

provoked people to go out but why are they on the streets it is more related to the overall

state of democracy in Serbia and in general different kind of, I would say, circumstances or events that led to the rise of COVID.

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