In Serbia, Student Demonstrations Over Education Converge With Rising Living Costs and a Kushner-Backed Development

A Train Station Collapse, Then a Movement

BELGRADE — The first cry came from Novi Sad, a city on the Danube known for its bridges and its stubborn pride. On November 1, 2024, a concrete canopy above the entrance to the city’s railway station collapsed with a roar that could be heard across the square. When the dust settled, 15 people were dead, many of them young, and dozens more were injured. The station had been renovated in recent years as part of a broader modernization program, and the image of twisted steel and shattered concrete quickly became a national symbol. For students at the University of Novi Sad, the collapse was not a random tragedy. It was a warning. They began to gather in silence, placing candles and flowers at the scene. Then they started asking questions. Why had the renovation not been properly inspected? Why had safety concerns been ignored? Why did it take a disaster for anyone to listen? Within days, the questions became demands, and the demands became a movement. Students in Novi Sad were soon joined by classmates in Belgrade, Niš, and Kragujevac. They occupied university buildings, set up blockades, and held nightly plenums to discuss their next steps. The government called for calm. The students responded with silence. The silence, they said, was for the dead. But it was also a verdict. The country’s education system, they argued, was not broken by accident. It had been neglected by a political class that treated universities as factories for loyalty, not institutions of critical thought. The train station collapse, they insisted, was a symptom of a much deeper disease: a culture in which public contracts are handed out to friends, oversight is bought off, and ordinary citizens are expected to accept the crumbs. What started as a call for justice over a construction failure was quickly becoming a referendum on the future of Serbia itself.

Education, Inflation, and the Cost of a Future

The demands of the student movement were initially narrow: release the documents related to the Novi Sad renovation, punish those responsible, and guarantee that no participant in the protests would be expelled or disciplined. But as the blockades continued, the conversation expanded. Students began to talk about what it means to be young in Serbia in the mid-2020s. University dormitories are overcrowded and often freezing in winter. Classroom technology is outdated. Professors earn salaries that require them to take on second or third jobs, leaving little time for the mentorship and research that make higher education meaningful. The student population, meanwhile, has been asked to accept a paradox: more years of schooling, more debt, and more uncertainty, while the rewards of education shrink in real terms. The economic context has made every grievance sharper. Serbia has experienced a painful period of inflation, with prices for food, energy, and housing rising far faster than wages. Although official inflation has cooled from its peak, the accumulated cost of living remains high. For many families, the simple act of filling a grocery cart has become a source of anxiety. Rents in Belgrade have climbed steeply, pushed upward by a construction boom aimed at wealthy investors rather than ordinary residents. The average salary, though slowly growing, still lags behind the European average, and young professionals frequently discover that their qualifications are worth more in Germany, Austria, or even Croatia than in their own country. The result is a demographic crisis that has emptied classrooms and hospitals of the very people Serbia needs most. The students know this. They have watched older siblings leave, and they have been told by teachers that the best career move is a plane ticket. The protests have become a way of saying no to that story. “I am not here because I am against something,” one student said at a rally in Belgrade. “I am here because I am for a country that wants me to stay.” That sentiment has resonated far beyond the campus. It has brought parents, pensioners, workers, and rural residents into the streets, not because they all agree on every demand, but because they share a sense that the social contract has been broken. The education system is the visible edge of that broken contract, but the grievance beneath it is broader. It is about whether the state still exists to protect ordinary citizens or whether it has become an instrument for the enrichment of a connected few. That question, once raised, refuses to be lowered.

A Scar in the Capital: The Kushner-Backed Luxury Development

No issue has dramatized that question more powerfully than the fate of a bombed-out building in the center of Belgrade. The former headquarters of the Yugoslav Army General Staff, a massive structure that was targeted by NATO forces in 1999, has stood as a ruin for more than two decades. It is not just a building; it is a memory of a war, a marker of national identity, and a piece of land that many Serbs consider sacred. In 2024, the Serbian government announced that the site would be transformed into a luxury hotel and residential complex, with a museum dedicated to the victims of the NATO bombing. The developer chosen for the project was not a Serbian construction giant or a global hospitality group. It was Affinity Partners, the private equity firm founded by Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law. The arrangement, signed as a 99-year lease, gave Kushner’s company the right to build what critics describe as a glass-walled enclave on one of the most emotionally charged plots in the country. The government has framed the project as a long-awaited renewal. Officials point to the promise of jobs, tax revenue, and the rehabilitation of a site that has been a symbol of stagnation. They also note that the museum will preserve the memory of the 1999 bombing. But the project has drawn fierce opposition. The terms of the deal were not made public. There was no open competition for the development. The decision was made quickly and quietly, and the political symbolism of the investor could hardly have been more provocative. For a generation that has grown up with the internet, Jared Kushner is not a neutral name. He is a figure who represents the blurring of political power and private money, and his appearance in Belgrade has given the protest movement a concrete target. The building itself has become a rallying point. Protesters have gathered outside it, wrapping the fence in banners. Some have placed photographs of the dead from the NATO bombing next to architectural renderings of the proposed hotel. The contrast is brutal: a memorial turned into a marketing pitch, a wound transformed into a profit center. Even Serbs who are generally skeptical of the protest movement have expressed unease about the deal. The question is not only whether it is legal, but whether it is right.

The Kushner Factor: Politics, Memory, and Money

Jared Kushner’s involvement in the Belgrade development is not his first entanglement with foreign governments, and it may not be his last. Since leaving the White House, Kushner has built Affinity Partners into an investment vehicle that has raised billions of dollars, including a $2 billion commitment from the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, according to public filings. That relationship, which became public after he left office, drew scrutiny from ethics watchdogs, but no charges were ever brought. Kushner has consistently maintained that his business deals are legal, transparent, and separate from his political life. His defenders note that there is no law against an American businessman investing abroad, and they point to the fact that the Belgrade project was approved by the Serbian government, not by the United States. In a statement to reporters, a spokesperson for Affinity Partners insisted that the firm operates with high professional standards and that the Belgrade project will benefit the city and its residents. But the controversy is not simply legal. It is deeply political. Kushner is the son-in-law of the man who was president when the United States pressured Serbia over its ties to Russia and China, and who has now returned to the White House. The timing of the Belgrade deal, coinciding with Trump’s political resurgence, has led to speculation about whether Serbia is seeking favor with Washington by offering a valuable prize to the president’s family. No evidence of such a link has been presented. The Serbian government rejects it. But the perception alone has been enough to poison the atmosphere. The project has also become a symbol of a broader trend: the transformation of Belgrade into a playground for foreign investors. A wave of construction is sweeping the city, with luxury towers rising along the Sava River and old neighborhoods being replaced by office blocks and boutique hotels. The developers are often offshore companies, the construction crews are often hired from abroad, and the apartments are sold to investors who never set foot in the country. The Kushner development, in this context, is not an outlier. It is the logical conclusion of a model of urban development that treats the city as a commodity. The students who protested the train station collapse were, at first, not thinking about real estate. But the more they investigated the train station, the more they found the same pattern: public money and public land flowing toward private interests. The Kushner deal, once they began to look at it, was impossible to ignore.

The Convergence: From University Occupations to a National Movement

The merger of the student demonstrations over education with broader public anger has transformed Serbia’s political landscape. In December, a massive demonstration in Belgrade drew tens of thousands of people, with organizers claiming the largest turnout since the fall of Slobodan Milošević. The government disputed the numbers, but it could not dispute the images: families pushing strollers, farmers driving tractors, doctors in white coats, actors in black, railway workers with flags, and students in their thousands. The crowd stretched from the National Assembly to the former General Staff building, passing landmarks that once seemed untouchable. It was not a single-cause march. There were banners calling for justice for the victims of the train station collapse, banners denouncing the rising cost of living, banners opposing the Kushner development, and banners demanding media freedom. The fact that all these causes could share one stage was itself a statement. What the movement lacked in formal structure, it made up for in moral energy. The student plenums, which operate through discussion and consensus, became a model of self-governance that many Serbs found both inspiring and confusing. There were no leaders to negotiate with, no spokespeople to attack, no party flags to wave. The government, accustomed to dealing with opposition parties, found itself facing a movement that refused to play by the usual rules. It responded in a familiar way: accusing the students of being foreign agents, comparing them to previous anti-government protests, and suggesting that they were being manipulated by the West. The accusations were met with mockery. The students invited government officials to attend their plenums, challenged them to debates, and posted their own accounts of events on social media. The government also tried to make concessions. In January, Prime Minister Miloš Vučević resigned, and several officials were placed under investigation. But the students did not declare victory. They said they would continue until the full set of demands was met, including a legally binding commitment to the reforms they had outlined. The resilience of the movement has surprised even its supporters. It has survived winter cold, exam season, and the relentless pressure of state media. It has also expanded beyond the university campuses, drawing in workers and families who never thought of themselves as activists. The reasons are not mysterious. In a country where the cost of living is high, the political system is opaque, and the future is uncertain, a movement that tells people they are not alone is powerful. It does not need a flag. It needs a pulse.

What Comes Next? Serbia’s Uncertain Road

The long-term consequences of the protests are still unclear. The movement has forced Serbia’s ruling establishment to react, but it has not yet forced a fundamental change in the way the country is governed. The Kushner development, for example, remains on the table. The lease is signed, and the investors have every incentive to proceed. But the debate around it has already shifted. What was once treated as a routine real estate deal is now a national controversy, and any future construction will take place under the glare of public scrutiny. The same could be said of the education system. The government has promised additional funding, new dormitories, and a review of university governance. But the students are watching to see whether those promises are followed by action. Their trust has been broken before, and they are not prepared to accept words in place of change. The broader political implications are equally significant. President Aleksandar Vučić, who has dominated Serbian politics for over a decade, has survived crises before. But this one is different. The protests have not been led by opposition politicians, who are widely distrusted, but by young people with no obvious political ambition. That makes them difficult to discredit and impossible to co-opt. It also creates a problem for the international community. Serbia is an EU candidate country, and Brussels has repeatedly called for the rule of law, independent institutions, and a free media. A protest movement that demands those things cannot be dismissed. At the same time, Europe is wary of destabilizing a country that sits at the crossroads of East and West, particularly at a time when Russia and China are competing for influence in the Balkans. The coming months will be decisive. If the government responds with genuine reform and a willingness to listen, the movement may gradually wind down, satisfied that its message was heard. If it responds with more defensiveness and repression, the protests will almost certainly grow. The students themselves offer no easy predictions. They say they are not interested in power, only in accountability. But the logic of protest is unforgiving: once you have raised the stakes, you cannot simply lower them. The question now is whether Serbia’s leaders are capable of understanding that the country has changed. The canopy that collapsed in Novi Sad was made of concrete and steel. The movement that rose from its rubble is made of something more durable: a generation’s refusal to accept a country that does not believe in them. They have already forced a conversation that no one expected, and they are not finished yet. Whether that conversation ends in reform or in confrontation will determine not only the future of Serbia, but the meaning of the word “hope” for an entire generation. The students are still in the streets. The candles are still burning. And the question, still unanswered, is not whether the movement will win, but whether the country can afford to lose it.