To most people out of the loop, it would indeed seem that he has some sovereignty, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. I assume most people think that he is inclined towards Russia because of some mild performative guests he does from time to time, and various statements he trots out that makes him look like an independent actor, such as when he criticized the attack on Iran. The problem with this is that for every one of these statements, he will have a completely contradictory statement just a few months thereafter. Vucic might be one of the only people in the world who’s statements taken at face value might be less meaningful than Trump’s, and I’d say that’s quite an achievement.
Whilst he performatively does some positive stuff with China and Russia, materially he is completely subservient to the West. His only meaningful economic policy is literally just bringing in FDI from the US and EU (and China on the occasion), whilst giving those same Western companies he welcomes additional subsidies. It’s actually so pathetic because he literally heralds these investments as if he himself somehow magicked them into existence, as if these companies aren’t looking into these investments as opportunities to make a profit, but are instead doing some personal favor to him. He is running a pseudo-fixed exchange-rate with the Euro, and his policy overall has killed all domestic industry, all that hasn’t already been privatized under his tenure, of course. He even started his rule by rolling out measures of austerity supervised by the IMF.
In spite of all this, he has declared the movement of the Students against him to be paid by the foreigners. The irony? It was recently discovered that Vucic himself has an advisor who is quite literally paid by GIZ, which is a German government agency, used primarily to finance various NGO’s and the such. Now whilst the students are simple liberals, there is among them at least some doubt as regards unbridled cooperation with the EU.
And if you thought that maybe Vucic only turned out like this when he came to power, guess again. Deutsche Welle writes(you’ll have to machine translate this one into english) that Dinkic, an infamous but now irrelevant politician, got convinced by an american diplomat to enter into a coalition government spearheaded by Vucic. In the text itself it is said that the “European partners” of Serbia were disappointed in the conduct of the previous government as regards Kosovo, meaning that Vucic and his government would be more amicable to further advancing Kosovo’s position. Which is exactly what Vucic has done, despite claiming some great imaginary victories over the Kosovar government, Kosovo has literally not implemented any of the measures as prescribed by the agreement in Brussels, while Serbia has implemented all of them. Nowadays Serbs are pretty much living like second class citizens in Kosovo, a great deal thanks to Vucic and his complete lack of any response on that front whatsoever. Vucic for his part is constantly just shifting blame for it on the previous government.
The correct Marxist stance? He is just an pathetic, opportunistic liberal who really likes the sound of his own voice. He started out as an ultranationalist who hates the west, and overnight alongside his partner in crime Toma Nikolic they became enlightened pro-European liberals practically overnight once they saw that only that rhetoric will get them into power. Vucic only sees benefits to himself and his lot, if what it takes to be in power is being a western vassal, he will gladly oblige.
I finally played Red Dead Redemption to see what all the fuss is about, and it’s a pretty fucking good game. Although I seriously do not understand the pacing of the game whatsoever.
Spoilers
From what I’ve seen on the wiki, there are 57 mission, 35 of which are in some way related to hunting Bill Williamson, who’s presented as character who’s dumber than a pile of bricks (then what does that make John?). Moving at the pace that Russia does in Ukraine, the game has you chasing this prick for around 60% of it’s playtime, only to kill him in the most anti-climactic way possible, in a place that doesn’t even feel natural for him to be found in. To add insult to injury, the guy Bill barely ever even appears during all of this, and since at some point you are not only chasing him but also Escuella, I half expected at the end that the game would tell me that the princess is in another castle, in South Africa where Elon Musk’s great-grandfather is helping them evade the wrath of Uncle Sam. John’s stupidity doesn’t help anything either, where for some reason the game makes you help out both sides of the civil war instead of simply letting you make a choice which side you will support. It’s especially stupid that in the penultimate mission working for the government, it’s directly implied that De Santa sent you and Espinoza to your deaths, yet John decides to trust him at the end anyway (whilst also not even mentioning the whole 20k pesos he promised you whatsoever) and to the surprise of no-one, gets betrayed. The death of Luisa too, is rather a tragicomedy.
Then after the whole Mexico chapter, we get back to America, to take on the omnipresent figure of Dutch. Yet despite him being the Godfather of you original enterprise, it only takes a measly 7 missions to take him out. The character of Dutch himself and his aspirations aren’t even clarified or presented all that well, where Arthur just kind of says “The guy went mad and started killing people”, but from the fact that Native Americans are joining his gang, it’s clear (and said by Dutch as well) that it’s much more complicated than that. And whilst he has a somewhat befitting send-off, the heavy lifting of actually building his character is left for RDR2.
But the most ridiculous part of all this is that the epilogue of the game, where you do everything you already did with Bonnie McFarlane, gets dragged to 9 mission, so longer than the Dutch saga in it’s entirety lmao. They seriously could have condensed the 9 mission into like 3 or 4, and the Uncle missions don’t really do anything for the narrative either.
Apart from that it also suffers from certain characters like West Dickens, Seth and Irish being way too weird, and rather (as people on the internet already observed) more fitting as relegated to stranger missions, rather than being actual characters necessary for the development of the main plot.