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The long-serving strongman leader of Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic, conceded defeat on Sunday in an election that pitted him and his right-wing party against a diverse student-led opposition movement that spent two years protesting his government.

It was a seismic political shift in the Balkan country where Vucic, who had been endorsed by Russian President Vladimir Putin and who denounced the student movement as a foreign-led attempt to unseat him, led with virtually absolute power for 14 years.

High turnout and gathering tensions marked the highly contested parliamentary election that was a showdown between Vucic and his right-wing Serbian Progressive Party and university students who, accusing the government of corruption and dismantling democracy, had built a popular following across the country.

Serbia’s 6.4 million voters were electing lawmakers to the 250-member Parliament. In conceding the election, Vucic said his party projects that his opponents, the youth-backed Students’ List, will take between 135 and 140 seats while his SNS party will have around 105.

“The Students’ List has won,” Vucic told supporters at his party’s election night event, though he blamed Serbia’s independent media as well as alleged interference by unnamed European countries and an ”American deep state” for the loss.

Emotions ran high in Belgrade on Monday after a student-led movement upset the right-wing populist Aleksandar Vucic’s party in Serbia’s snap election. A celebratory mood gripped the capital, with drivers honking their horns and passers-by holding up three fingers — the winning list’s ballot number and a Serbian greeting. Many wore badges and other symbols of the student movement, while a large group of residents spent the day cleaning up a park between parliament and the presidency after Vucic loyalists, who had camped there for more than a year, fled. FRANCE 24’s Mark Owen speaks with researchers and political activist Aleksandar Matković.