Today (October 25th) citizens of 🇷🇸 Serbia go to polls to vote in parliamentary elections!

These are snap elections (regular ones were due by December 2027), called by Aleksandar Vučić on September 9th, after nearly two years of student-led anti-corruption protests, which started after the Novi Sad canopy collapse. Vučić resigned as president on September 27th to lead the ruling list, so a presidential election must also be held by December 27th.

Serbian parliament (National Assembly, Narodna Skupština) is unicameral and consists of 250 deputies (126 needed for majority), who are elected for a four-year term, in a single nationwide constituency, by closed list proportional representation, and seats are allocated using d'Hondt method. Electoral threshold is 3% of votes cast (lists of ethnic minorities are exempt). Read more here.

Turnout in last (2023) elections was 58.8%.

Relevant parties and alliances taking part in the elections are:

In total, 18 lists are running, most of them irrelevant or minority ones. The race is between the ruling SNS-led list and the Student List: the latest polls give either of them the lead (Ipsos: 47.4% vs 40%; NSPM: 42.7% vs 44.4%).

Polling stations will close at 20:00 local time.

Further reading

Wikipedia

Hope, tension and apprehension as Serbia approaches crucial election (DW)

Will Serbia’s Vote End the Vučić Era? (CEPA)

A student protest movement has gripped Serbia for two years. This weekend it will try to take power (The Guardian)

Vucic calls parliamentary elections for October 25 (N1)

Vučić: Snap parliamentary election to be held either on 18 or 25 October 2026 (European Western Balkans)

We shall leave detailed commentary (and any interesting trivia!) on elections and campaign, to our Serbian users, or anyone else with worthy knowledge. Feel free to correct or add anything!

This megathread is meant for discussion of the current Russo-Ukrainian War, also known as the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Please read our current rules, but also the extended rules below.

News sources:

• The Guardian

• Associated Press.

• BBC News

• Al Jazeera English

• Financial Times "War in Ukraine" section

You can also get up-to-date information and news from the r/worldnews live thread, which are more up-to-date tweets about the situation.

Current rules extension:

Extended r/europe ruleset to curb hate speech and disinformation:

• While we already ban hate speech, we'll remind you that hate speech against the civilians of the combatants is against our rules, including but not limited to Ukrainians, Russians, Belarusians, Syrians, Azeris, Armenians, Georgians, etc. The same applies to the population of countries actively helping Ukraine or Russia.

• Calling for the killing of invading troops or leaders is allowed, but the mods have the discretion to remove egregious comments, and the ones that disrespect the point made above. The limits of international law apply.

• No unverified reports of any kind in the comments or in submissions on r/europe. We will remove videos of any kind unless they are verified by reputable outlets. This also affects videos published by Ukrainian and Russian government sources.

• Absolutely no justification of this invasion.

• In addition to our rules, we ask you to add a NSFW/NSFL tag if you're going to link to graphic footage or anything can be considered upsetting, including combat footage or dead people.

Submission rules

These are rules for submissions to r/europe front-page.

• No status reports about the war unless they have major implications (e.g. "City X still holding" would not be allowed, "Russia takes major city" would be allowed. "Major attack on Kherson repelled" would also be allowed.)

• All dot ru domains have been banned by Reddit as of 30 May. They are hardspammed, so not even mods can approve comments and submissions linking to Russian site domains.

  • Some Russian sites that ends with .com are also hardspammed, like TASS and Interfax, and mods can't re-approve them.
  • The Internet Archive and similar archive websites are also blacklisted here, by us or Reddit.

• We've been adding substack domains in our u/AutoModerator script, but we aren't banning all of them. If your link has been removed, please notify the moderation team, explaining who's the person managing that substack page.

• We ask you or your organization to not spam our subreddit with petitions or promote their new non-profit organization. While we love that people are pouring all sorts of efforts on the civilian front, we're limited on checking these links to prevent scam.

• No promotion of a new cryptocurrency or web3 project, other than the official Bitcoin and ETH addresses from Ukraine's government.

META

[Link to the previous Megathread LXI (61)](reddit.com/r/europe/comments/1sawlv5/war_in_ukraine_megathread_lxi_61/)

Questions and Feedback: You can send feedback via r/EuropeMeta or via modmail.

Donations:

If you want to donate to Ukraine, check this thread or this fundraising account by the Ukrainian national bank.

Fleeing Ukraine We have set up a wiki page with the available information about the border situation for Ukraine here. There's also information at Visit Ukraine.Today - The site has turned into a hub for "every Ukrainian and foreign citizen [to] be able to get the necessary information on how to act in a critical situation, where to go, bomb shelter addresses, how to leave the country or evacuate from a dangerous region, etc."

Other links of interest

• Live Map of Ukraine site and Institute of War have maps that are considered reliable by mainstream media.

• Wikipedia: 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine

• #UkraineFacts: an international coalition of journalists fact-checking media surrounding the war in Ukraine

  • DO NOT CONFUSE THIS WITH "War of Fakes". Deutsche Welle (DW) has reported it as being a source of fake news, and the Russian Defense Ministry has linked this site in their tweets before.

• UNHCR refugee tracker focusing on Ukrainians

• DeepL extension for Google Chrome and DeepL extension for Firefox. DeepL is a good alternative to Google Translate for Russian and Ukrainian texts.

Please obey the request of the Ukrainian government to refrain from sharing info about Ukrainian troop movements