Thewesternbalkans.
Aleksandar Vučić skillfully makes geopolitical moves that can be defined as a policy of “always with the West, never against Russia”. He has hardly thought about the wise policy of the last Bulgarian Tsar Boris III – “Always with Germany, never against Russia”, which guaranteed the political survival of the Tsar between the two world wars, until his unexpected early death in August 1943. While neighboring Bulgaria, Slavic and Orthodox like Serbia and Russia, has taken a hard anti-Russian course over the past three decades, Serbia has managed to sit on three chairs – “We will not introduce sanctions against Russia. We want friendship with China. We want to join EU”, declared Serbian President Aleksandar Aleksandar Vučić on February 15 at a pro-government rally in Sremska Mitrovica, convened to announce that the “color revolution” in Serbia had failed. This is how Vučić most succinctly formulated the strategic multi-vector nature of Serbian foreign policy.
In the months-long demonstrations in Serbian cities, the “hand of the West” was not visible. The students who organized the protests publicly distanced themselves from the pro-Western Serbian opposition parties and NGOs. The driving force behind the peaceful protests was patriotic youth, dissatisfied with Vučić’s tacit surrender of Kosovo and Republika Srpska and integration of the country into Euro-Atlantic structures.
However, Serbia is already practically entangled in Atlantic structures and European markets. Belgrade’s relations with Russia have been practically frozen for the past six months. Serbia has terminated some of its military contracts with Russia, while others have been frozen. Belgrade’s purchase of 12 French Rafale fighter jets marks Serbia’s strategic rejection of the traditional attachment to Russian weapons inherited from the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia.
Although Serbia’s banking sector has long been considered an oasis for Russia in Europe, Russian businessmen are now complaining that from the end of 2024, payments from Serbia become impossible, and Belgrade is effectively joining Western financial sanctions against Russia.
Serbia even canceled the Russian Hermitage Days in Belgrade – a Russian cultural project funded by Gazprom Neft – which was supposed to take place in February 2025.
Vučić, while coolly accepting US sanctions against NIS and its majority shareholder Gazprom, even publicly speculated with the possibility of a hostile option regarding NIS – the seizure of Russian property.
During the years of the war in Ukraine, Serbia provided significant help to Ukraine, including financial assistance in the amount of 52 million euros.
Serbia is not part of the international coalition that supplies Ukraine with weapons and military materials, but through intermediary countries Serbian weapons and ammunition reach Ukraine. Reuters published parts of a leaked secret US military document, according to which Serbia has agreed to supply weapons to Kiev and has already sent them.
Serbia’s political support for Ukraine is even more significant. Serbia is consistently among the countries that condemn Russia’s aggression at international and regional forums and insist on its immediate withdrawal from Ukraine. In less than three years, the presidents of the two countries have met six times, and both consider their relations as significant and friendly. The wives of the two presidents maintain even warmer relations.
Serbia is much closer to Ukraine than some other countries that believe that by imposing sanctions on Russia they have done enough for Ukraine and its people.
Against this background, the narrative that Serbia has not imposed sanctions against Russia is now used only for domestic political purposes.
Therefore, Vučić had to play the „Russian card“, which he resorted to when pressure from the West intensified too much. On February 17, he sent his Foreign Minister V. Đurić to Moscow for a meeting with S.V. Lavrov, and on March 7, he personally called Putin to confirm that he would attend the celebration of the 80th anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War in Moscow on May 9. Serbia offered even to host talks on the Ukrainian settlement. But most importantly, Aleksandar Vučić secured strategic backing and guarantees that Russia would not support the largest protests in Serbia’s history, which is also a guarantee of Aleksandar Vučić’s political survival.
The protests in Serbia ended peacefully on March 15. The Serbian president has proven himself to be a grandmaster in the geopolitical game
