Faced once again with the choice between the West or Russia, Serbia will, by all accounts, be on the side of Moscow at the beginning of May, and against most European Union countries.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić has announced that he will attend the Victory Day commemoration in Russia on May 9, even if "the sky falls on his head," alluding to warnings from EU countries that going to Moscow is unacceptable.
"Whenever President Vučić feels there is room to make a concession to one of the two sides, the West or Russia, without the other side punishing him too much, he does so," says Helena Ivanov of the Henry Jackson Society, a foreign policy think tank.
Victory Day is a national holiday in Russia, which this year, according to Russian media announcements, will be attended by the leaders of China, Brazil, India, and also Slovakia - an EU member.
In recent years, Moscow has used the military parade to emphasize Russia's leading role as a fighter against Nazism, thereby justifying the military offensive in Ukraine, launched in 2022.
Because of the war, Russia was punished by sanctions from Western countries, former allies in the anti-fascist struggle.
Serbia has not joined the sanctions, and often abstains when decisions are made to punish the Russian offensive.
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How much influence can the European Union have on Serbia?
Participation in the May 9th parade or the celebration in Moscow will not be taken lightly by Europe, Kaia Kallas, the EU's High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, recently warned.
A harsher message came from Jonat Vseviov, Secretary General of the Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who said that "certain decisions have a price."
"The consequence is that they do not join the European Union," he said.
Warnings to Belgrade from the European Union are not new.
"Since 2022, there have been many diplomatic offensives for Belgrade to impose sanctions on Russia."
"Various threats were made, but none of them ultimately came to fruition," Ivanov says.
Although the EU has no desire to expand, it has an interest in cooperating with the authorities in Serbia, she points out.
"The European lever of influence over Serbia has been weakened," says Vuk Vuksanović from the Belgrade Center for Security Policy.
"Enlargement has not progressed for 11 years, which allows Belgrade to say: 'You're not accepting us anyway, you're threatening us with an empty gun.'"
"The more important question is whether Vučić would anger key European Union member states like France and Germany by doing so," says the book's author. Balancing Serbia: Between Russia and the West (Serbia's Balancing Act: Between Russia and the West).
Vučić says he will probably go to Moscow alone and "take all the blows from the world, both from outside and from within," because he does not want to be to the recently elected government of Serbia We are sorry that he is against the European Union.
The government of Prime Minister Đuro Macut was elected in early April, and among the ministers are determined opponents of Serbia's entry into the EU, such as Information Minister Boris Bratina, who burned the flag of the European bloc at a protest.
The interests of Europe and Russia
Serbia became a candidate for EU membership in 2012, but in the last three years it has not opened a single cluster, a set of negotiation chapters that set the conditions for accession.
Among complaints The most common reasons highlighted by some members of the bloc are Serbia's incompatibility with EU foreign policy and the failure to impose sanctions on Russia, the lack of the rule of law, and the stalemate in negotiations between Belgrade and Pristina.
Despite slow EU integration, the European Union remains Serbia's largest donor and foreign trade partner.
Companies from the European Union were also the leading investors in Serbia, The data is from 2023.
If the EU were to impose sanctions on Serbia, every person in the country would feel it firsthand, which could jeopardize the government's position, says Helena Ivanov.
Despite Serbia's refusal to impose sanctions on Russia, the EU has not reacted more harshly because it has its own interests - one of which is lithium, which would be mined in the Jadra Valley, and which the union needs to implement a green transition, she explains.
"Serbia is also a strategically very important country and has an influence on politics in neighboring countries."
"If the European Union were to cut off the funds, there would be a serious risk that Russia and China would start to fill that political and economic vacuum," Ivanov says.
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The government behind the scenes is doing a lot of things that suit the European Union and the West, such as delivery of Serbian weapons Ukraine.
Moscow was willing to tolerate the ammunition deliveries because Serbia was one of the few countries that did not close all its doors to it and granted Serbian documents to certain Russian citizens, Vuk Vuksanović estimates.
"Serbia is still useful to Russia for some small favors, so it was worth turning a blind eye to some of Belgrade's actions."
"More broadly, Russia is not that interested in the Balkans at the moment. Its goal is to win the war it is waging, and the Balkans are of secondary importance," says Vuksanovic.
The two countries are also linked by joint ownership of the Oil Industry of Serbia, which has been under their control since the beginning of the year. the threat of American sanctions hangs over.
Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, Serbia has hundreds of thousands of Russians, and some of them were granted Serbian citizenship by decisions of the highest state officials.
Among those who have become Serbian citizens are powerful figures connected to intelligence structures, war profiteers and oligarchs, he announced. research portal Krik.
'Sonic Cannon' and Closeness with Moscow
Vučić confirmed that he would attend the Victory Day celebrations in Russia when he also announced the findings of a Russian intelligence report on the use of sonic weapons during anti-government protests on March 15.
The BBC could not confirm the authenticity of the document published in Russian and Serbian on the Security Information Agency website, without memorandum and author.
The sound cannon was not used, and there are indications that the reaction of the crowd was planned and synchronized, the conclusion is about the event on March 15, about which Several Serbian NGOs are calling for an investigation before international institutions.
Since then, Moscow has been visited by the Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Porfirije, who, at a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, concluded that "the Serbian people view the Russian people as one."
"Sometimes it can be that the hope of the Serbs is great, a hope that depends more on Russia, Russian politics, than on Serbian ones," said Porfirije.
The Patriarch also said that the Serbian Orthodox Church's desire is that "if there is a new geopolitical demarcation, we will be close in that Russian environment," claiming that "the centers of power want to destroy the identity of the Serbian people and culture from the West."
Like Serbian officials, Porfirije said that the "color revolution," as the authorities describe the months-long student protests, is a "temptation" that will be defeated.
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Decades between East and West
Although the people of Serbia are aware that it would not be economically, politically, or militarily profitable for Serbia to cut itself off from the European Union, support for EU integration is decreasing, says Helena Ivanov.
This was also evident in the mass anti-regime protests this year, which, unlike some previous ones, did not feature the EU flag, she says.
Those who were probably most keen for Serbia to join the Union are now disappointed with Brussels' reaction to the protests, he explains.
Instead of unequivocal support which many protesters expected, EU leaders held talks with Vučić in Brussels, without much criticism.
In addition to disappointment with Brussels, there is also a widespread belief that "Russia is a big brother who protects Serbia," says Ivanov.
The research, in which she participated in 2022, showed that at that time the majority of respondents from Serbia believed that the state should not impose sanctions on Russia.
Most also believed that it should not do so even if the EU offered concessions or threatened some form of sanctions against Serbia.
Such attitudes have been contributed to, among other things, by the West's attitude towards Serbia, in which people see that "something is constantly being asked for in order to give something little," says Ivanov.
"Favouritism in Russia is also contributed to by reporting by domestic media, which exalts Russia and often humiliates Western actors."
Recent research by the Information Center at the American University in Bulgaria it indicated and that Serbia is among the countries that are the main targets of the Russian disinformation campaign.
An analysis of more than half a million texts published on the pages of the Pravda network, a group of websites that, according to this research, spread Russian propaganda, showed that Serbia ranks fourth in terms of the number of published articles relative to the population.
Vuk Vuksanović, however, believes that pro-Russian messages are not spread so much by Moscow, but by media controlled by the ruling party in Belgrade.
"This is done primarily because the ruling party profits from Russia's popularity in Serbian public opinion."
"It is also an opportunity to intimidate the West with the Russian factor. In all of this, the Kremlin benefits because pro-Russian content spreads to neighboring countries like Montenegro and North Macedonia."
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Which European leader is going to Moscow?
Robert Fico, the Prime Minister of Slovakia, announced that he will attend the Victory Day celebrations in Moscow, assessing that "Kaia Kallas' warning and threat are disrespectful" and that he "strongly" opposes them. Fico announced on the social network Iks.
"No one can tell us that liberation came from the West, when we know that it came from the East." Fico said later.
"The former Soviet Union made the greatest sacrifice in the victory over Hitler and Nazi Germany, and that is a historical fact, whether anyone likes it or not."
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