Original article (in Bosnian) was published on 22/12/2025; Author: Mladen Lakić
A fabricated statement attributed to Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić about the “start of war” was shared in several posts on a Facebook page. These posts were designed to attract clicks to an article published by the website Pozitivna Srpska, thereby generating advertising revenue from the article.
In December 2025, the Facebook page “Bosna i Hercegovina online” posted an image of Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić three times, attributing to him an “urgent” statement claiming that “war is starting” (1, 2, 3).
By the time this analysis was written, these posts had received thousands of comments and “likes” and had been shared more than a hundred times. All three posts included a link leading to an article published by the website Pozitivna Srpska on 10 December. The article reports on Vučić’s statements at an economic forum held in Belgrade and carries the headline “VUČIĆ: WAR IS BEING PREPARED”.
The same image was also shared in other Facebook posts (1, 2), but without a link to the article.
A Fabricated Statement
The article published by Pozitivna Srpska and shared in posts on the Facebook page “Bosna i Hercegovina online” was taken from the website Blic, where it was originally published on 9 December 2025. The article conveys statements made by the President of Serbia at the GLOBSEC BELTALKS forum. The forum was held in Belgrade from 8 to 9 December this year. Vučić spoke on the panel discussion titled “Europe’s Competitiveness in a Divided Geopolitical Landscape”.
While speaking about the situation at Oil Industry of Serbia (Naftna industrija Srbije/NIS), which has been under U.S. sanctions since 10 January 2025 due to so-called secondary risk, namely majority Russian ownership, Vučić stated that he was still “awaiting news from Moscow regarding the gas arrangement”. In that part of the discussion, as reported by Blic, Vučić made a series of observations, including that there is almost no rationality left in contemporary international politics and that the world is heading toward a major conflict. According to him, it is becoming increasingly difficult to predict the course of global events because decisions are being made without dialogue or consideration of the other side, while truth is of diminishing interest to the international public. He emphasized that he had previously warned about the war in Ukraine by analyzing not only political facts but also people’s emotions, which is why he believes a similar scenario could occur on a broader scale. The article also relayed his prediction of a “major war”:
“No one wants to listen to the other side anymore. In a year and a half, we will face a major war”, Vučić emphasized.
He stressed that Serbia remains militarily neutral and will not participate in any war until 2027.
Contrary to the claims made in the analyzed Facebook posts, the article does not mention anywhere that Vučić announced the “start of war.” These posts were designed to attract clicks to the article shared in them. Raskrinkavanje has written about similar posts published on the Facebook page “Bosna i Hercegovina online” in several analyses (1, 2, 3). As previously noted, these posts have no informational value, and their sole purpose is to increase the number of clicks on articles published by the website Pozitivna Srpska, thereby generating revenue from the advertisements displayed in those articles.Based on the facts, we rate the first Facebook post featuring the fabricated announcement of the start of war attributed to Aleksandar Vučić as fake news. The subsequent posts are rated as spreading fake news.
