BERLIN – Thousands and thousands of demonstrators blocked roads, highways and bridges across Serbia on Saturday, ordinary citizens asking the autocrat-president Aleksandar Vucic to stop the large mining projects for the extraction of lithium and other highly sought-after materials on the market, projects suspected, however, of having a frightening environmental impact. The defense of nature, the climate and the environment has given rise to what are perhaps the largest mass demonstrations in Serbia and in the entire former Yugoslavia that can be remembered from the distant times of the collapse of the regime of Slobodan Milosevic, which waged wars of extermination against the secessionist Yugoslav republics and was later defeated by the intervention decided by NATO.
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