In an address to the Progressive Party’s bashi-bazouk in Ćaciland (bashi-bazouk: irregular Ottoman troops; meaning: hotheads) Aleksandar Vučić said that their mission is over because the “color revolution” in Serbia had failed, and that their camp would therefore be dismantled. For Vučić, the residents of Ćaciland are heroes because they “guarded Serbia and defended the state,” that is, they guarded his rule, and now they can breathe a sigh of relief because the immediate danger has passed.
The use of the term “color revolution” clearly places Vučić’s regime among pro-Russian oligarchies and autocracies. However, Vučić may not be the best ideologue of his own regime (he still hasn’t managed to write a book about how he defeated the color revolution). That role is better handled by secondary pro-regime figures, such as Metropolitan Irinej of Bačka, who in a traditional Christmas interview for Pečat, as reported by Politika, says that Serbia must not lose its spiritual orientation.
“We spiritually, and then culturally, civilizationally, meaning historically, belong to the Orthodox East, not to the contemporary West, which is no longer inspired by Christianity, in theory or in practice.” Apparently it is Christianity that inspires the criminal regimes of Putin and Vučić today. In the West, God has been expelled “first from universities, and then from the entire public life, into the private sphere. [And] where there is no God, there is no man. Humanism is a failed ideology…”
“Therefore we always stand wherever the great Orthodox Russia is, without which we would not exist today…” – a blind attachment to Russia, which is writing the most shameful pages of its history today. He pointed out that he was “honored, as rarely in my life, to be present when His Holiness Patriarch Kirill, addressing the President of Russia directly, and the next day the entire world, said: ‘Of all the local Orthodox Churches, the Serbian Church is the closest to the Russian Church – in culture, in language.’”
The Metropolitan gives a positive assessment of Vučić’s regime and cites as evidence: rejection of Brussels conditions, refusal to recognize Kosovo’s status as a state, resistance to abolishing Republika Srpska, and refusal to impose sanctions on Russia.
On misled youth: “the ideology of neoliberalism [has], with its deathly hand, through its protagonists in the West and here at home, seized part of our youth by the throat and led them astray, as well as part of the educated population, who seem ready to prolong its life with their own and others’ blood” – the Metropolitan glosses over the open bloodshed in Ukraine by Russia, while accusing Serbian citizens, who have been expressing disagreement with Vučić’s regime through peaceful protests for months, of allegedly being willing to shed their own and others’ blood.
On the godlessness of students and citizens: “At its core this is a crisis of faith, apostasy among a part of the population who have replaced the ideology of communism of their grandfathers and fathers with the no less godless ideology of neoliberalism.”
Metropolitan Irinej elaborates what we also hear in regime media: anti-Western sentiment, Russophilia, nationalism, manipulation of Orthodox religion, and the targeting of citizens. Instead of sending calming and joyful Christmas messages, Irinej assumes the role of a regime ideologue. In this way he fills the media space with content that Vučić does not have to say himself, but which is nevertheless omnipresent.
Translated by Marijana Simić
Peščanik.net, 08.01.2026.
