Kommersant: Russia is asking Serbia to decide

The President of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, recently said that Serbia would like to sit on three chairs - EU, USA, Russia, but that "it will no longer be possible".

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Vucic, Photo: Shutterstock
Vucic, Photo: Shutterstock
Disclaimer: The translations are mostly done through AI translator and might not be 100% accurate.

The statement of the President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, that Serbia does not need anyone's military bases sounded quite restrained and was perceived as his intention not to push the topic of the Russian military base on the one hand, and not to spoil relations with Moscow on the other, according to today's Moscow daily Komersant.

Dnevnik assesses that Vučić thereby clarified a question that worried many in Serbia and abroad - whether Russia will build its own military base on the territory of Serbia. The existence of such plans in Serbia was discussed after the statement of the Russian ambassador in Belgrade, Aleksandar Bocan-Kharchenko, which he made at the beginning of last week, the newspaper reminds.

The ambassador's statement raised a lot of noise in Serbia. Many Serbian media and experts immediately blamed Russia for "by spreading information about the Russian military base, it is deliberately undermining Serbia's interests at a time when it is under great attention from the West in connection with the formation of a new government and the decision to join sanctions" against Russia, the newspaper adds.

Kommersant's sources in Belgrade, who, he says, are familiar with the position of the Serbian authorities, explain the cautious statements of the president by the recent intensified military cooperation between Serbia and the USA, primarily at the Jug military base near Bujanovac in the south of the country.

It is interesting that the statement of the Russian ambassador, which raised so much noise in Serbia, followed only a week after the statement of the President of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, about the policy of official Belgrade, the newspaper writes and quotes Alexander Lukashenko's statement that Serbia would like to sit on three chairs - the EU, USA, Russia, but that "it will no longer be possible".

"In Serbia, these words were almost unanimously evaluated as an invitation to Belgrade to side with Moscow in the current geopolitical confrontation, which it sent through its Belarusian ally," says Kommersant.

The newspaper quotes the words of foreign policy expert, former ambassador to Belarus, Srećko Djukić, that the Serbian authorities should have realized a long time ago that they cannot sit on three chairs for long and lead the ostrich's policy of burying its head in the sand, because it will not work on either side.

"Nevertheless, Đukić believes that in the coming months it is unlikely that cardinal changes in such policy of Belgrade will be real - until the chairs start to move apart," adds Komersant.

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