The Red Line of Belgrade – How Serbia’s Youth Stops the Sellout to Kushner

Belgrade – It was a quiet but unmistakable uprising. Thousands of young Serbians formed a human chain on Tuesday around the destroyed military headquarters in the center of Belgrade – that memorial which still bears the scars of the NATO bombings of 1999. With red ribbons and raised hands, they drew a line around the site that, according to the will of the government and a U.S. company, is to be transformed into a luxury project. It is a line against forgetting, corruption, and the arrogance of power.

The 500-million-dollar project, supported by President Aleksandar Vucic and closely linked to Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, envisions the construction of a high-rise building, offices, and luxury shops – precisely where the Yugoslav Ministry of Defense once stood. A site that for many Serbs is a symbol of destruction, pride, and resistance. Now it is to become the backdrop for money laundering and historical erasure.

The government in Belgrade, loyal to Trump and economically dependent on Washington, justifies the project with “growth” and “new friendship.” Vucic speaks of a “sign of progress” – while the United States at the same time has imposed 35 percent tariffs on Serbian imports and sanctioned the state oil company because of Russian ownership. Progress that moves on a foreign leash.

But the protests are growing. Architects, historians, students, and residents see the building complex as an irreplaceable cultural heritage – a manifesto of postwar modernism, designed in the era of former Yugoslavia, when concrete was still an expression of political vision. Last year, Vucic’s government revoked the site’s protected status and leased the entire complex for 99 years to “Affinity Global Development,” a company from Kushner’s circle. Shortly afterward, the public prosecutor’s office launched an investigation into allegedly forged documents. What is a prestige project for Vucic is seen by many as a national humiliation. “This is not a construction site – it is a grave,” said one student in one of the interviews circulating in Belgrade that day. “If they destroy this, they destroy our memory.” Around her, hundreds carried posters with the same words: “We are the wall.”

The movement has long since reached a political dimension. For a year now, weekly demonstrations have shaken the government, since that disaster in Novi Sad when sixteen people died during the reconstruction of a train station because concrete pillars gave way. It was the moment when Serbia’s youth understood that the price of corruption is measured in corpses. The fight for the military complex is the continuation of the same revolt – against a regime that has elevated wealth, power, and vanity to its state religion.

The site itself stands for more than just architecture. It was once the target of NATO bombs, a symbol of Western intervention against Milosevic’s regime. For many Serbians it remains an open wound – and the idea that a U.S. company connected to Trump’s family would turn this place into a luxury quarter feels like a cynical act of historical reversal. Anti-NATO sentiment runs deep; it is part of the country’s collective memory. The protests in Belgrade are therefore more than a local confrontation. They are the reawakening of a nation that no longer watches as its cultural heritage disappears into investors’ brochures. A young architect said: “They think they are building the future, but in truth they are tearing down history.”

The Serbian lawmakers voted to speed up preparations for a controversial real estate project in the capital backed by Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of U.S. President Donald Trump.

While in Albania Kushner’s company is simultaneously building a 1.6-billion-dollar resort on a former military island – a project that is equally controversial – the conviction is growing in Serbia that money and power are not legitimations but tests of moral integrity. Belgrade is drawing its red line. Against the desecration of its memory, against the coldness of global speculation, against the arrogance of those who believe history is for sale. And perhaps that is the true meaning of this hour: that a country whose capital once burned in the light of bombs now glows in the candlelight of young hands – as a sign that dignity cannot be demolished.