Original article (in Serbian) was published on 28/5/2026; Author: Ivan Subotić
On the TikTok profile @nikola.plavi, a video was published showing a march of protesters at the “You and I, Slavija” student protest held on May 23 in Belgrade. One of the gathered protesters carries a red-white-blue flag, which led the author of the video to the following conclusion: “Blockaders with the Croatian flag in the middle of Belgrade”. However, after analyzing a video, we came to a different conclusion. The protester is actually carrying the flag of the Principality of Serbia from 1835, i.e. the flag according to the Constitution of Sretenje.
The TikTok video quickly spread to other social networks, where it gained significantly more attention. For example, it was published on Facebook in the “Future of Serbia Aleksandar Vučić” group, which has more than 17,000 members. In one post on that network, the disputed video caused hundreds of reactions and mostly derogatory comments. In addition, the same video appeared on Instagram (1, 2, 3) and Threads (1, 2, 3). In the comments of these posts, we could read that the protesters were Ustasha, that they should be beaten, arrested, and even killed.
How did we conclude that the flag from the video is not Croatian?
We divided the video into several frames using the online tool Ezgif. This allowed us to spot part of the coat of arms on the flag at the 12-second mark of the video. Instead of the checkerboard that is on the coat of arms of Croatia, we noticed a semicircular shape of a dark color. In question are olive or oak branches that are on the coat of arms of the flag of the Principality of Serbia, according to the Constitution of Sretenjw from 1835. For better illustration, we sharpened the footage using the online AI video upscaler tool.
This is not the first time that the flag of the Principality of Serbia under the Sretenje Constitution has appeared at protests in Serbia. Protesters already wore it during the “Serbia against violence” protest in 2023, but also at student protests. During the protests, its vertical version could be seen, which resembles the inverted French tricolor, but has the same coat of arms as the horizontal version – a shield with a cross and four Serbian firesteels (ocila), surrounded by oak and olive branches.
For more than a year and a half, the propaganda of pro-government media has been trying to connect students and citizens at protests with Croatia or with the notorious nazi Ustasha movement. We recorded several examples of such a narrative within our Blockade Notebook.
