The people of Serbia v the Trump family
Today in Focus

The people of Serbia v the Trump family

B2Upper-intermediateOctober 21, 202631 min
  • Politics

Serbia’s authoritarian president personally intervened to remove the protection of a historic landmark – then came protests and prosecutions. Tom Burgis on the murky tale of Trump Tower Belgrade. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/infocus

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Today, the people of Serbia versus the Trump family.

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A1 40%A2 35%B1 15%B2 8%C1 3%
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  • 163 harder words (B2 and up) in the whole episode.

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0:00

This is The Guardian. Today, the people of Serbia versus the Trump family. In the heart of Belgrade, in the heart of the Balkans, near the banks of the Danube, there stands this building, the General Staff building. Built in the 60s,

0:35

it embodies the difficult history of Serbia. This is Tom Burgess, an investigations correspondent at The Guardian. He recently returned from a reporting trip to the Serbian capital. It's built to look like a canyon where a famous battle was fought in the Second World War, where the Yugoslav partisans fought this extraordinary resistance to the Nazis and the Italian fascists.

1:02

Then the building becomes the military headquarters of the Yugoslav Ministry. Then comes the end of the Cold War, the late 80s convulsions across Eastern Europe. And Yugoslavia and the Balkans started to send into bloodshed and terrible violence. And the General Staff building is still the military headquarters but now of a fracturing nation.

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