Picula: Vucic Uses Military Parade in Belgrade to Tell He Still Sits on Multiple Chairs and Has Army Under Control

Military Parade in Belgrade, September 20 2025 (BETAPHOTO/Defense Ministry)

The European Parliament’s envoy for Serbia Tonino Picula said on Sept. 22 that the display of weapons purchased both in the East and in the West at a Sept. 20 military parade in Belgrade was Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic’s “classic eclectic foreign policy message” that he “still intends to sit on multiple chairs.”

Picula wrote in a message on X that Vucic used the parade to send a message to, as he calls them, “external enemies,” who were allegedly trying to remove him from power, and also to the domestic public, “that he is still in control of the most important state institution (the Army), having recently demonstrated distrust in the institutions of repression.”

Croatia’s MEP also said that the absence of European guests, including Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, was “an indicator that the regime is losing strength,” especially after the great media hype about Vucic’s visits to, as Vucic called them, “the allies”, in order to attend their military parades.

“Vucic is doing everything to avoid losing power in elections, which he would call ever so gladly in the past years. Now he hesitates,” Picula said.

Picula pointed out that “realistic estimates say that not everything in Serbia that is anti-Vucic is automatically pro-European.”