Mass protests have gripped Georgia and Serbia for months, as tens of thousands of their citizens take to the streets to challenge ruling parties that over the last decade have managed to almost completely dominate the political landscapes. 

The protest movements are unfolding in a region that has experienced multiple "colour revolutions" since the beginning of this century. Yet not every protest movement has led to regime change. In both Georgia and Serbia, the critical question is whether demonstrators can secure their objectives or whether momentum will dissipate in the face of entrenched power.

Georgians protest for their EU future 

In Georgia, the latest wave of protests was triggered by the October 2024 general election, and intensified after the controversial decision by the ruling Georgian Dream (GD) party to suspend the country’s EU accession bid until 2028. For many Georgians, the ongoing standoff is a fight for the country’s future, to keep Georgia on its path to join the EU and prevent a drift back into Russia’s sphere of influence.

The unrest began in October 2024, when GD claimed victory in a general election widely condemned as fraudulent by international observers, opposition parties and civil society. Since GD announced the suspension of Georgia’s EU membership bid in November, then there have been daily protests. Tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Tbilisi and other cities and small towns, sometimes battling with riot police armed with batons, water cannons and tear gas. 

The protests immediately after Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze’s announcement of the decision to halt progress on EU accession drew massive crowds, some with as many as 200,000 people. They diminished somewhat over Christmas and the New Year, but were revitalised in the new year, not least because arrests of opposition politicians and journalists fuelled public outrage. Activists told bne IntelliNews reporters in Tbilisi that the regime’s attempts to suppress dissent, some of them brutal, have only reinvigorated the protest movement. 

With the population overwhelmingly supporting EU integration, GD’s actions to bring the protests to an end risk backfiring by alienating the public and strengthening opposition movements. The question now is whether these demonstrations will achieve their primary demand: new parliamentary elections.

Serbian protests sparked by tragedy 

In Serbia, protests started after the collapse of a concrete canopy at the Novi Sad railway station on November 1, killing 15 people. What began as outrage over a single tragedy has snowballed into a broader movement challenging the 13-year rule of President Aleksandar Vucic and his ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS).

Protests have swept across Serbian cities, with students, farmers and opposition groups uniting to demand accountability and systemic reforms. The government’s attempts to placate protesters – including the arrests of officials implicated in the Novi Sad tragedy – have done little to quell the unrest. Vucic has even offered to face a referendum on his presidency, but to no avail. 

The largest protest to date was on January 17, when tens of thousands of students gathered outside the state broadcaster, RTS, accusing it of pro-government bias. RTS workers showed their solidarity, unfurling a banner that read “RTS workers are with the students”. 

As in Georgia, the protests have also been marked by violence. In December, a car rammed into demonstrators, injuring members of the Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra. A similar incident on January 16 left a female student seriously injured, further fuelling public outrage. In response, farmers pledged to use tractors to protect student protesters.

Vucic’s government is not standing idly by. In a bid to counter the protests, he announced the creation of a new Movement for the People and the State, aimed at rallying support for his administration. While Vucic has retained control of key institutions and enjoys significant support especially in rural areas and outside the main cities, bne IntelliNews’ correspondent in Belgrade reports that the parallels to Otpor – the student-led movement that toppled Slobodan Milošević in 2000 – are impossible to ignore.

Broadening movements

In both Serbia and Georgia, the protests have persisted partly because of the disparate groups of people attending them. In Georgia, 79% of the population want EU membership, according to a recent poll. While the initial post-election protests were concentrated in Tbilisi, while many people elsewhere in the country did not contest GD’s victory, the party’s move to suspend progress towards EU accession mobilised protests across the entire country, from major cities to small towns. 

In Serbia, the initial student-driven protests have been joined by farmers, postal workers, teachers, lawyers and other groups. Protests are giving way to strikes. Employees of the state-owned Post of Serbia staged a spontaneous strike on January 21 in solidarity with the protests. The Bar Association of Serbia announced a seven-day suspension of work, starting January 20, while teachers in more than 50% of schools refused to begin the new term. Thousands kept away from work during the general strike on January 24. 

In Georgia, employees and employers participated in a three-hour strike on January 15 to demand new elections in the Black Sea country and the release of all those unlawfully detained at the anti-government, pro-EU street protests. Strikes are a very new phenomenon in Georgian politics, reported bne IntelliNews’ correspondent in Tbilisi, and this first attempt was framed by the activist organisers as a “warning” to the government.

Government protests have previously broken out in the two countries. Georgia erupted into protests in spring 2024, when the government adopted a “foreign agents” law modelled on Russian legislation. As well as giving the government new powers to clamp down on NGOs and civil society, the law also jeopardised Georgia’s EU accession process. 

Serbia has seen successive waves of mass protests on a variety of pretexts. The Don’t Drown Belgrade protests, symbolised with a yellow rubber duck, were sparked by the midnight destruction of a historic Belgrade district to make way for the Belgrade Waterfront development. Two mass shootings in mid-2023 brought tens of thousands onto the streets to demand government accountability and the end of what protesters described as a “culture of violence” promoted via channels including state TV. Environmental issues, including the planned Jadar lithium mine, are also powerful mobilising forces. 

Until now, however, each of these waves of protests have eventually petered out, while Vucic and his SNS continued to secure election victories. Yet it is not a foregone conclusion that the same will happen this time. Discussions about a general strike have in progress for days, and a prominent student organisation has called for a day of widespread civil disobedience on January 24. 

Historical precedents suggest that sustained momentum is key. Serbia’s Milosevic fell after mass protests culminated in the October 2000 revolution, while Georgia’s Rose Revolution in 2003 peacefully ousted Soviet-era leader Eduard Shevardnadze.

Ukraine’s 2013-14 Euromaidan revolution, seen as a potential parallel for Georgia’s current political situation, erupted when then president Viktor Yanukovych's decided against signing an Association Agreement with the EU, instead opting for closer ties to Russia. While the revolution was successful in ousting Yanukovych, it came at the cost of at least 100 deaths. 

North Macedonia's 2016 Colourful Revolution and Armenia's Velvet Revolution of 2018 highlight the potential for broad-based, peaceful protests to force change.

By contrast, failed uprisings in authoritarian countries such as Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan show the resilience of entrenched regimes backed by robust security apparatuses. Azerbaijan, for instance, recently experienced protests initially sparked by a fatal road accident, but whose rapid spread reflected frustrations with government corruption, police impunity and economic inequality. However, if there was any chance of it escalating into a broader movement like those in Serbia and Georgia, that was quickly crushed.

Authoritarian regimes in the region, like Azerbaijan, rely on repression to quash dissent, and it is rare to see the scale of protests that are currently erupting in Georgia and Serbia.  After the crash, the Azerbaijani government’s heavy-handed tactics contained the crisis before it spread. Still, a brave band of activitists continue to challenge the government in Baku at grave risk to themselves. 

The situation is less severe in Georgia and Serbia, which are both classified by NGO Freedom House as "transitional or hybrid regimes”. They are autocratic enough that people take to the streets because they have little hope of bringing about change via elections, but democratic enough that they can protest without fear this will lead to death, serious injury or a decade-long prison term. 

Models for change 

If there was a peaceful handover of power in Georgia or Serbia, the experience of nearby countries gives some hint as to what it might look like. 

In Armenia, the Velvet Revolution unfolded in April-May 2018. Protests swelled after the country’s president Serzh Sargsyan attempted a seamless switch to the prime minister position. Initial talks between protest leader Nikol Pashinyan – Armenia’s current prime minister – and Sargsyan proved ineffective, but as the protests continued to grow and workers went out on strike, various political parties declared they would back Pashinyan for prime minister, or at least not stand in his way. Finally, even MPs from Sargsyan’s ruling Republican Party voted to elect Pashinyan, the sole candidate to stand, as the country’s new premier, ending the standoff. 

North Macedonia’s Colourful Revolution started when then president Gjorge Ivanov blocked an investigation into then prime minister Nikola Gruevski and fellow politicians over a wiretapping scandal. At the time, Gruevski’s right-wing VMRO-DPMNE had been in power for a decade, with the opposition losing hope that it would be removed via the ballot boxes. Thousands joined protests in Skopje and other cities across the country, only coming to an end when a deal was brokered by the European Union and the US. Under this arrangement, Gruevski stepped down and committed to early elections.

It’s not clear whether the ongoing protests in either Georgia or Serbia will get to this stage, or if they will simply peter out as previous movements have done. For the moment, however, protesters show no signs of stopping in their quest to loosen their governments' grip on power.