Abandonments
Prologue I: The Funeral
The funeral is over.
Ratko Mladić has been buried in Belgrade.
Thousands came to see him off: flags, uniforms, priests, veterans. Among them were Serbian ministers, senior officials from Republika Srpska and the Russian ambassador.
Patriarch Porfirije conducted the funeral service.
Serbian soldiers carried the coffin.
The European Union condemned the glorification of a convicted war criminal. Yet, its Commission formally refused to call the funeral a state funeral. Between those two things remained a scene that anyone could see.
And hear. The coffin was lowered to a ceremonial volley by the Serbian Armed Forces.
When the gunfire fell silent, the city did not.
Belgrade carried on building. West of the city, land was being prepared for EXPO 2027.
Here, the story ceases to be a myth of the past and becomes a myth of the future.
Prologue II: The Construction Site of History
Mladić belongs to one strand of Serbian memory of abandonment: the memory of a land and a people who, in the nationalist interpretation of the 1990s, were left alone in a hostile world. It is a memory born of the violent break-up of Yugoslavia and what followed: the wars in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, international sanctions, NATO intervention in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the war in Kosovo and NATO’s bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1999, as well as the long period of international administration and the political dispute over the status of Kosovo.
For those who carry this memory, the United States, NATO and leading Western European states did not arrive as neutral arbiters. They were perceived as actors who took sides, recognised some victims more readily than others, and ultimately punished Serbia, including citizens who had spent years taking to the streets in protest against hatred, nationalism and the policies of their own government.
In one part of Serbian political memory of the 1990s, Mladić is not primarily the man convicted at The Hague. He is the general who stood at the centre of an embattled Serbian world: its defender, and later its symbol of defiance.
The historical record is more complex. Serbian civilians were victims of war crimes, persecution and forced displacement in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo. Bosniak and Croat civilians were subjected to persecution, systematic violence and mass atrocities. Kosovo Albanians were victims of persecution, killings and forced displacement during the 1998–1999 war, while Serbs, Roma and other civilians in Kosovo were also subjected to crimes and persecution.
In Srebrenica, in 1995, genocide was committed against Bosniaks, as established by international courts. But that fact does not erase other suffering, just as the suffering of Serbian, Croat or Albanian civilians cannot diminish the gravity of Srebrenica.
All these victims belong to the same history, but their stories are not the same. The crimes cannot all be placed on the same level, nor can the suffering of one group be used to diminish the suffering of another. History is more difficult than that: it asks us to see every victim, but also to call every crime by its proper name.
Yet political memory rarely preserves complexity. It remembers the wound. And Serbian memory of that wound has proved exceptionally enduring.
Prologue III: The Construction Site of the Future
EXPO belongs to another kind of abandonment. A younger generation, which did not create the wars of the 1990s, sees another danger. Its fear is that the international community is once again looking away. This time while Serbia builds at extraordinary speed, and questions of public procurement, environmental protection, construction standards and institutional oversight remain open.
The first catastrophe is remembered. The second is being built. The first asks what the world did to Serbia. The second asks what Serbia is doing to itself — and who will be there when the bill comes due.
I
Countries like to display their future. They build pavilions. Plant flowers. Print brochures. Hire architects. Come up with a slogan. And then invite the world to come and look.
Serbia will do this in 2027. Belgrade will host EXPO 2027, and the country will present itself as a place of innovation, international cooperation and progress. More than a hundred countries are expected to participate. New infrastructure is being built around the exhibition site. The exhibition itself is presented as a major opportunity to promote Serbia internationally.
And the United Nations will be there.
It has appointed Maher Nasser as the Commissioner-General of its pavilion and Matilde Mordt, the UN Resident Coordinator in Serbia, as Deputy Commissioner-General. The organisation says its presence will promote multilateralism. The Sustainable Development Goals.
It is a fine idea. But there is another record.
The United Nations Working Group on the issue of human rights, transnational corporations and other business enterprises examined the EXPO project in Serbia and expressed serious concern about the special legal framework under which the project is being built.
There were questions about public procurement.
About expropriation.
About construction safety.
About environmental protection.
About oversight.
About workers’ rights.
About the protection of workers.
The Working Group stated that contracts worth up to one billion euros could be awarded without a competitive procedure.
The European Commission expressed concerns of its own. In its report on Serbia, it warned about the use of special laws and intergovernmental agreements in connection with EXPO. In the section on environmental protection, it stated that environmental impact assessments and strategic assessments must be carried out for projects, including EXPO 2027, before construction permits are issued. The European Parliament also expressed concern about corruption and construction standards.
And yet the United Nations is coming.
The pavilion will be there. The flags will be there. There will be speeches. The Sustainable Development Goals will be on the walls.
This is not necessarily hypocrisy. Institutions have reasons for participating. The UN can say: we are entering because we want to bring our principles with us. The EU can say: we are participating because engagement is more useful than isolation. Germany can build its pavilion. Italy can build its pavilion. The international community can come to Belgrade.
Tell Serbia to believe in its European future.
But there is another question. A simpler one.
If you know that the rules and safeguards are disputed, what does it mean to come and participate?
II
The answer begins in Novi Sad.
On 1 November 2024, the concrete canopy of the railway station collapsed.
Sixteen people were killed.
The tragedy became a symbol because the question was larger than a single structure. It became part of a wider debate about public procurement, the quality of construction, political responsibility, and the relationship between speed and oversight. The collapse also triggered prolonged student protests against corruption and for political accountability.
It is easy to describe such a failure in institutional language.
Irregularities in procurement.
Construction standards.
Administrative responsibility.
Political responsibility.
But concrete does not fall in abstractions.
It falls on people.
The politician sees a project.
The minister sees a deadline.
The contractor sees a contract.
The engineer sees a calculation.
The official sees a file.
The citizen sees a roof.
And when the roof collapses, all those abstractions become bodies.
Novi Sad became a warning about a country that is building fast.
New motorways.
New railway lines.
New stations.
New factories.
New neighbourhoods.
New towers.
New investments.
Speed has become one of the central political values of contemporary Serbia. Projects are announced through deadlines. Deadlines become a measure of ability. Delay becomes failure.
But infrastructure has another property.
It has to last.
The question is not simply how quickly something can be built. The question is whether the institutions responsible for building it can keep pace without becoming weaker.
That is the question Novi Sad left behind.
III
EXPO has brought that question to a scale that can no longer be ignored.
It is not just an exhibition.
It is a territory.
West of Belgrade, in Surčin, a large area is being reshaped around exhibition halls, accommodation, transport infrastructure, commercial development and related projects.
The wider planning framework has expanded dramatically.
Research estimates the current planning area at around 813.6 hectares and states that around 600 hectares could include highly fertile agricultural land. It also raises questions about groundwater, drainage, water protection and the planned marina. These are claims made by a civic and academic initiative and should be understood as part of the public debate, rather than as conclusively established facts.
A field is not the same thing as an empty plot of land.
It holds water.
It produces food.
It absorbs rain.
It belongs to a landscape that existed before the project and will remain after the exhibition closes.
Concrete changes that landscape permanently.
That is why the question of environmental protection cannot be reduced to whether Serbia needs an exhibition.
The question is what remains after it.
The European Commission explicitly stated that Serbia must carry out environmental impact assessments and strategic assessments for projects, including EXPO, before construction permits are issued.
The principle is simple.
Development is not only what is built.
It is also what is lost, what is protected and what future generations inherit.
Sustainability acquires meaning precisely here.
Not when it is printed on the walls of pavilions.
But when it becomes inconvenient.
IV
Environmental policy is, ultimately, a question of time.
What will remain when the building is finished?
What will remain when the visitors leave?
What will remain when the pavilions are empty?
Land.
Water.
Public money.
Infrastructure.
Trust in institutions.
The modern state is very good at measuring completion. It finds it much harder to measure consequences. A project can have a deadline. A contract can have a value. A building can have a completion date.
But a polluted aquifer does not need a completion date.
Nor does a weakened institution.
Nor does lost public trust.
That is why the collapse in Novi Sad matters to the debate about EXPO, without suggesting that the two projects are the same.
They are not.
But they raise a common question:
What happens when political urgency becomes stronger than institutional caution?
The answer cannot simply be that every project is different.
Every project is different.
That is precisely why general standards exist.
V
This is where the abandonments meet: one remembered, the other only anticipated.
The first says:
“The world abandoned us.”
The second says:
“International actors are abandoning us again.”
The first is memory.
The second is fear.
The first looks towards The Hague.
The second looks towards Surčin.
The first remembers bombs that destroyed concrete and people.
The second fears concrete that destroys people.
The first speaks of a world that intervened without seeing.
The second of a world that now comes, participates and watches.
Here, the presence of the international community at EXPO becomes difficult.
Serbian environmental activists, students and civic organisations are not simply asking foreign governments to leave.
They are asking for something harder.
Consistency.
If the United Nations speaks of sustainable development, what does sustainable development mean in Belgrade?
If the European Union speaks of the rule of law, what does the rule of law mean when special legislation is adopted for a politically urgent project?
If Europe speaks of environmental protection standards, what happens when those standards begin to slow a project that has already acquired enormous political momentum?
These are not questions about whether Serbia should develop.
They are questions about how it develops.
Who decides.
Who pays.
Who oversees.
Who has the right to object.
And what happens when someone exercises that right.
The real test of institutions begins when rules become inconvenient; when following the rules threatens to slow a project.
That is when standards cease to be language and become practice.
VI
Perhaps that is precisely why Novi Sad matters so much.
The station canopy did not collapse in a country that was standing still.
It collapsed in a country obsessed with progress.
The problem is not development.
The problem is development without sufficient institutional restraint.
A government must be capable of building. But it must also be capable of stopping.
Of listening to the engineer who says no.
To the regulator who says not yet.
To the citizen who says: “Show us the documents.”
To the expert who says: “Assess the consequences first.”
To the official who says: “Follow the procedure.”
These are not obstacles to development.
They are part of development.
Get Petar Veljačić’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
Without them, speed becomes a value in itself.
And when speed becomes a value in itself, every delay appears unreasonable. Every safeguard becomes a matter for negotiation. Every exception becomes easier to justify.
That is how institutions weaken.
Not necessarily through a dramatic act.
Sometimes through a series of small decisions in which an exception gradually becomes the rule.
One special law.
One special procedure.
One urgent deadline.
One contract handled differently.
One assessment that arrives too late.
One oversight mechanism weakened.
The danger is not that one project becomes an exception.
The danger is that the exception becomes a method.
VII
The EU understands this.
At least in its formal language.
Its report on Serbia does not say that Serbia should stop building. It says that the law must be applied, that environmental impact assessments must be carried out, that transparency must be improved and that legal safeguards must be preserved.
It specifically points to problems connected with EXPO and the use of special legislation and intergovernmental agreements.
That is not spectacular.
There is no grand opening, no cameras, no applause.
It is almost painfully dull.
But good institutions are usually like that.
A functioning public procurement system is dull.
An environmental impact assessment completed before construction begins is dull.
An inspector doing their job is dull.
A contract that the public can scrutinise is dull.
A building that stands is dull.
Good institutions are almost invisible.
Yet, their failure is visible at once.
That is why they need to be discussed before something goes wrong; because once the consequences appear, it is too late to ask whether the institutions were functioning.
VIII
And then, there is the United Nations pavilion.
It need not be seen as a disgrace.
It can be seen as an opportunity.
The UN is coming to Belgrade because it believes engagement matters. Its official role at EXPO is to promote multilateralism.
The Sustainable Development Goals.
That is a legitimate reason to be there.
But it also creates a test.
If the UN is present, it should not be present only inside its pavilion.
It should also engage with the questions surrounding the construction itself.
Environmental protection.
Workers’ rights.
Transparency.
Public participation.
The relationship between infrastructure and human rights.
The point is not for the UN to become a building inspector.
Nor for the EU to decide whether Serbia should build.
The point is consistency.
The standards promoted inside the pavilion should have meaning outside it as well.
The pavilion can be more than a symbol.
It can be a test of whether international engagement has substance.
IX
There is a temptation to divide Serbia into two countries.
Serbia that remembers the bombing.
Serbia that wants to be part of Europe.
Serbia that respects its veterans.
Serbia that demands accountability for crimes.
Serbia that wants to build.
Serbia that fears the way it is being built.
Serbia that does not forget its victims.
Serbia that must not forget the victims of others.
Serbia that wants sovereignty.
Serbia that seeks security through alliances.
Serbia of Mladić.
Serbia of EXPO.
Serbia of Russia.
Serbia of Europe.
Serbia of organised crime.
Serbia of students.
But those two Serbias often live in the same person.
The same family can remember the 1999 bombing and worry about polluted water.
The same citizen can distrust NATO and still want Serbia to join the European Union.
The same person can be proud of new infrastructure and angry about corruption.
A single country can see off a general whom many regard as a hero while preparing a United Nations pavilion at the same time.
Contradiction is not an anomaly.
It is part of political life.
The mistake is to demand that Serbia choose one memory and reject the others.
That is not possible.
Nor is it necessary.
The task is harder.
To distinguish memory from truth.
Memory tells us what people believe happened to them.
Truth asks what happened to everyone.
Memory says:
We suffered.
Truth asks:
What did we do?
Memory says:
The world abandoned us.
Truth asks:
Where was our responsibility?
And now there is another question.
Memory says:
We must build.
Truth asks:
What are we building?
Here, “truth” does not mean a final judgement on the past.
Facts establish what happened.
Truth demands that we confront what we remember with what can be verified, with what we are responsible for, and with what we are creating today.
Because some facts do not yet exist.
They are still being created by the decisions we make today.
X
That is what EXPO places before Serbia.
The country wants to show that it has entered the future.
But the future is not a building.
It is already what remains of the present once the building is no longer new.
If EXPO leaves behind useful infrastructure, stronger institutions, protected resources and greater public trust, it may become what its organisers say they want: a genuine investment in Serbia’s future.
If it leaves behind damaged land, unnecessary costs, weakened safeguards and another generation convinced that decisions are made without them, the exhibition will demonstrate something else.
Not that Serbia does not know how to build.
But that it has not yet learned how to build with restraint.
That difference matters.
Because the question is no longer whether Serbia can attract the world.
Obviously, it can.
The question is what kind of country the world will find when it arrives.
Epilogue
These two images of Belgrade belong together.
Ratko Mladić’s coffin passing through the city.
Cranes rising over Surčin.
One is heavy with the past.
The other with expectations.
One says:
Remember what happened to us.
The other says:
Look at what we will become.
Between them stands the citizen.
And the citizen’s question is simpler than any political narrative.
Not:
Who abandoned us?
But:
Who will be responsible for what comes next?
The answer cannot come only from Brussels.
Nor Washington.
Nor Moscow.
Nor Beijing.
Nor the United Nations.
And it cannot come from EXPO.
It must come from Serbia itself.
From institutions that build.
From citizens who scrutinise them.
From officials who accept that responsibility sometimes means slowing down.
The funeral is over.
EXPO is still being built.
The question is no longer only who abandoned us.
The question is also who remains when an uncomfortable question needs to be asked.
And after all the questions about who abandoned us, one more difficult question remains:
Have we sometimes abandoned ourselves?
