Serbia (Future Map Game 3)

Serbia (Serbian Cyrillic: Сербија, Serbian Latin: Srbija), officially the United Serbian Republic, is a country in the Balkans region, which is in southeastern Europe. With the capital being the city of Belgrade, it is a well sized country, with a total population of around fifteen million people. The United Republic encompasses Serbia proper, and in 2024, it annexed Montenegro, as well as parts of Macedonia. It borders Bulgaria to the east, Romania to the northeast, Croatia to the northwest, Bosnia and Herzegovina to the west, Macedonia to the south, and Albania to the southwest.

The Kingdom of Serbia took part in World War I, which was triggered by the Austro-Hungarian invasion of the country. Serbia lost a quarter of its male population. Following the war, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was created. During World War II, the kingdom was conquered by the Axis powers. The rump of Serbia was governed by a German military administration and a Serbian puppet government. The Yugoslav partisans fought in Serbia, becoming one of the most successful resistance movements in Europe. It was liberated in 1944—45 by the partisans and the Red Army during the Belgrade Offensive. Following that, Jozef Tito established the Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia, with Belgrade as the capital.

The Republic was part of the Non-Aligned movement during the Cold War, following the Stalin–Tito split. Tito died in 1980. Later, in the 1990s, Yugoslavia fell apart after a series of conflicts known as the Yugoslav Wars. The former republics of Yugoslavia (Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Macedonia) gained independence, and until 2006, the successor state was known as Serbia and Montenegro. Since 1999, a major conflict took place in Kosovo, a region in southwestern Serbia that claimed independence from the Belgrade government. Many nations recognized Kosovo's independence, until it was completely taken over in 2023.

In 2023, the Serbian military occupied Kosovo and Montenegro. The state was renamed from the Republic of Serbia to the United Serbian Republic. The following year, a referendum took place in Macedonia on whether or not to join Serbia. The highly controversial figures presented were 97% voted against. As a result, the Serbian military occupied two regions of northern Macedonia in 2024 and 2025.