A proposed lithium mining project in Serbia is supposedly getting pushback from the country’s population. Or is it?

Zlatko Kokanovic, a 48-year-old Serbian farmer, and fellow villagers have sparked nationwide protests to stop the building of Rio Tinto’s first European lithium mine, warning it would pollute their land and endanger public health.

Last month, Serbia reinstated Rio Tinto’a (RIO.L), opens new tab license to develop what would be Europe’s biggest lithium mine in the Jadar region of western Serbia, two years after it was annulled due to protests by environmental groups.

Warnings about the damaging effect of mining by Kokanovic and his neighbours in the village of Gornje Nedeljice motivated thousands of people to protest against the Rio Tinto project in dozens of cities around Serbia over the past month.

Serbia granted the license for Rio Tinto to extract the metal during the middle of last month and, not surprisingly, the project has been condemned by environmentalists.

While lithium is needed for Europe’s so-called renewable energy projects, other reports state that Russia’s security services warned Belgrade that the protests were being organized as part of a Color Revolution in an effort to try to oust the country’s pro-Russia government.

It’s very likely the protests in Serbia are being bankrolled by the National Endowment for Democracy (a CIA front), or green NGO’s. Similar actions have taken place in Hungary and they are becoming an annual event in Eastern Europe obviously as a way to try to intimidate country’s deemed friendly to Russia.

In this case, it is another instance of environmentalists being used as useful idiots in order to achieve regime change. Many green groups have been bribed by a number of financial or political interests to undermine any number of mining projects and they gladly do the bidding of who is willing to fork out the cash.

PHOTO CREDIT: Pixabay