PRAGUE -- Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic denied having close links to Russian President Vladimir Putin and repeatedly batted back the notion that his EU candidate country was a “Trojan horse” for Moscow despite its refusal to join European sanctions since Russia invaded Ukraine and other differences with the bloc.
Speaking at the Globsec conference in Prague on August 31, Vucic said he hadn’t met or spoken to Putin in at least the two and a half years since Russian troops rolled across the Ukrainian border in February 2022.
“There are no ‘both sides,’” Vucic said. “We are on the EU path. Yes, we have traditionally very good ties -- and we are not hiding it and I’m not ashamed of that -- with Russia; it has always been the case between Serbs and Russians.”
He said that, while he’d recently had a “great” conversation with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who was also in Prague this week, “Nobody in Europe agrees with me on this issue, but everybody in Europe understands my position.”
He added that he thinks Serbia has implemented its growth and reform agenda “better than anyone else.”
Serbia and Turkey are the only EU candidate countries that have avoided imposing sanctions on Russia.
SEE ALSO: EU Criticizes Claims of Intelligence Cooperation Between Belgrade and MoscowSerbian officials, particularly current Vice Prime Minister Aleksandar Vulin, have maintained close ties with Moscow since the invasion of Ukraine.
Alongside his Montenegrin counterpart in Prague, President Jakov Milatovic, Vucic called on his EU partners to show more trust in Serbia's intention to join.
He said the process depends not on Serbia's relations with Russia but primarily on normalizing relations with Kosovo, which declared independence in 2008. Belgrade does not recognize its former province’s sovereignty.
“Yes, we are on [an] EU path, and the biggest problem for Serbia…is our relationship with Pristina,” Vucic said. “It’s not all this stuff on Ukraine, because all these big political decisionmakers, they know everything.”
“It’s all about this, and this is a very difficult issue for us; everybody knows it,” Vucic said.
Kosovo and Serbia have been negotiating normalization since 2011 through the Brussels dialogue, supervised by the EU.
“The goal is to establish mutual trust between Serbia and the EU, not to view Serbia as a Russian ‘Trojan horse,’” Vucic said.
Vucic disagreed with Milatovic regarding the EU perspective. Milatovic took an “optimistic position,” predicting that Montenegro could become an EU member by 2029, while Vucic said Serbian integration would not be possible before 2030.