Original article (in Serbian) was published on 7/2/2025; Author: Milica Ljubičić
The decision of the Trump administration to halt all projects of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and their funding for three months has been met with glee by domestic tabloids, as it could impact certain civil society organizations that had projects with USAID. However, the pro-regime tabloid Informer went a step further, accusing Biden of providing over $900 million through USAID to overthrow Vucic. The tabloid got his figure by summing up the funds that USAID allocated over the past four years for projects in Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina. However, the projects that this agency implemented in the Western Balkans focused on strengthening the capacities of the civil sector, democracy, the economy, human rights, and transparency. Informer’s claims about overthrowing Vucic become even more absurd when considering that USAID carried out numerous projects in cooperation with the Serbian government, including initiatives to strengthen the country’s energy sector and healthcare system.
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and its future have been one of the main topics in both domestic and global public discourse these days, given that the Trump administration has decided to suspend its operations for the next three months.
This agency, founded in 1960, has a broad spectrum of activities, from providing humanitarian aid, supplying food to countries facing hunger, implementing various health programs, and distributing vaccines, to strengthening democracy, fostering economic progress, developing civil society, investing in education, and protecting the environment. According to BBC na srpskom, USAID employs around 10,000 people, two-thirds of whom work abroad. The agency has funded various projects in the civil sector, as well as those carried out by governments.
Its future is currently uncertain, and all of this has prompted the pro-regime tabloid Informer to accuse Joe Biden of allocating $939 million through USAID to overthrow Vucic.
These serious and unfounded accusations are based on data on how much money USAID allocated to Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina during Biden’s tenure.
“The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has paid as much as $537 million to Albanian extremists in Kosovo and Metohija. Islamists from Bosnia and Herzegovina have received $402 million”, claims Informer, using typical hate speech. “All this money has gone to people who constantly attack the government in Belgrade”, the article concludes.
They further claim that “the suspicious financing was also confirmed by Richard Grenell”, a former Trump administration official.
In reality, on February 4, Grenell retweeted a post from the account kos.data, which listed how much money USAID had donated to Western Balkan countries from 2020 to 2024.
Along with the retweet, he wrote: “Hard-working Americans pay taxes, while politicians in Washington recklessly spend that money. Billions of dollars have been given to left-wing NGOs to implement radical policies in other countries”.
The numbers that have been circulating on social media were originally published by BIRN on January 30, along with a graph showing how much money USAID donated annually from 2020 to 2024 to Serbia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, and Albania.
According to BIRN’s calculations, the total amount reaches approximately $1.7 billion, but Informer focused exclusively on the funds allocated to Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo during that period.
However, according to currently available data, USAID has invested in Bosnia and Herzegovina in projects related to the development of the tourism sector and strengthening human rights. In Kosovo, the agency has implemented projects such as enhancing municipal transparency, building civil society capacity, promoting gender equality, and embracing diversity. Additionally, USAID collaborated with the government of Kosovo on projects aimed at strengthening the economy.
The claim that Biden invested $900 million to overthrow Vucic becomes even more absurd when considering that the agency has helped implement various projects in cooperation with the Serbian government, even during Vucic’s tenure.
A testament to this is the exhibition “Twenty Years of Partnership/Creating Together”, which was held in 2021 to mark two decades of cooperation between USAID and Serbia. The opening of the exhibition was attended by then-Prime Minister Ana Brnabic and Ivica Dacic, who was the Speaker of the National Assembly at the time.
According to the website of the Serbian government, from 2001 to November 2024, USAID has invested approximately $1.2 billion in Serbia. Minister for European Integration Tanja Miscevic stated last year that over $900 million was allocated for development purposes.
Currently, the USAID website is unavailable, making it impossible to verify all the government projects in which the agency has participated, but some of them are listed below.
As reported by RFE, in 2021, USAID provided Serbia with over $9 million in aid to combat the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. The assistance included the procurement of ambulances, medical equipment, and testing containers, as well as collaboration with the Red Cross of Serbia and UNICEF to support the most vulnerable families.
At the end of 2022, USAID invested $127,000 to renovate and equip several rooms at the Milan Jovanovic Batut Institute of Public Health. Additionally, they provided medical vehicles for clinics in three Serbian municipalities.
In 2021, USAID donated $22 million to Serbia to improve the economy, enhance energy efficiency, strengthen the media sector, and curb brain drain. At the time, then-Minister for European Integration Jadranka Joksimovic stated that these funds would be used to strengthen democratic institutions, improve public administration accessibility for citizens, and promote balanced regional development, including employment opportunities for disadvantaged groups.
That same year, the Ministry of Public Administration and Local Self-Government boasted that 25 Serbian municipalities were part of the USAID Responsible Governance Project, which aims to increase transparency, encourage citizen participation in decision-making, and combat corruption.
At the beginning of 2023, the Ministry of Mining and Energy and USAID signed a memorandum to work on improving energy efficiency in Serbia.
It is also well known that USAID played a role in the formation of the National Alliance for Local Economic Development (NALED), where Ana Brnabic once served as vice president.
In recent days, SNS party officials have celebrated the decision to suspend USAID projects and funding for civil society organizations in Serbia. However, social media users have been quick to remind them that USAID has also supported various state projects. One of these was the development of the Serbian National Assembly’s website, which, until recently, was visible on the website itself. Today, that information is no longer available.
