The long-serving strongman leader of Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic, has conceded defeat 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 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.