She believes the return to war in Europe has strengthened the ruling coalition parties and incumbent President Aleksandar Vučić. The ruling coalition that endorsed the mine, led by President Vučić’s Serbian Progressive Party, was comfortably ahead in the polls as of Thursday.

Back in the village of Gornje Nedeljice, Petković feels that Rio Tinto is not worried about the election outcome. She believes that the company has invested too much to stop, regardless of the outcome. The miner has created its own technology to mine jadarite, which is found nowhere else in the world. Since the government canceled the project, says Petković, there have been no signs that Rio Tinto is preparing to leave. The machines remained and the miner continued to buy local real estate, she claims.

On March 30, another militant organization, Marš sa Drine, published details of a phone call they say prove Rio Tinto is preparing to resume work at the mine after the election. The phone call took place between a professor from the University of Belgrade involved in the Rio Tinto project and an anonymous source posing as an employee of Rio Sava, the Serbian subsidiary of Rio Tinto. During the conversation, the two discuss the arrival of equipment from the German company DMT and an Austrian company called Thyssen, which the professor says will “probably” arrive in April. Neither DMT, Thyssen, nor the professor responded to WIRED’s request for comment. In a statement, a spokesperson for Rio Tinto called the “alleged” recording “misinformation”, adding that the agreement with the two suppliers was signed before its authorization for the mine was withdrawn.

“They lied to us in January”, Marš sa Drine noted on Twitter, urging their followers to vote against the project on Sunday. “Why is any piece of equipment, whether a bolt or a bulldozer, discussed in the context of a project that has been CANCELED?”

Some believe that Rio Tinto has faced so much opposition in Serbia due to the company’s legacy, coupled with multiple cases of environmental damage. “Historically, mining companies have been viewed so negatively that it doesn’t matter to the public if they transition to minerals that are used for the energy transition,” Burlinghaus says.