The raids on critical civil society organizations earlier this week are merely the culmination of the spillover of the Trump administration’s dismantling of USAID into Serbia’s daily politics. Since the current US president ordered a radical shift in foreign aid policy, Serbian authorities have seized the opportunity to significantly distort information about USAID spending, which was presented to the American public, and artificially “shove” it into the narrative of foreign efforts to overthrow the government.
With Donald Trump’s return to the presidency of the United States, major changes began in both foreign and domestic policy. On the domestic front, the most visible are the activities of Elon Musk, who is leading the fight against “waste, fraud, and abuse” of the state budget through radical cuts to the state administration.
One of the first casualties of Musk’s reform zeal was the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which he called “criminal” on his social media platform X and stated that “it must die.” Soon, officials from the US administration began presenting examples, from their point of view, of wasteful spending of American taxpayers’ money on projects that, primarily ideologically, do not align with the vision of the current administration. Two projects that were implemented in Serbia were mentioned.
