Political Scientist Bondarenko: “Vučić Can Make a Choice in Favor of the West, and Not of Russia”
Serbian President Alexander Vučić will sooner or later have to choose between Russia and the West. This is what political scientist and Balkan expert Oleg Bondarenko said in an interview for a Russian publication
“Vučić is trying to stand up for himself in relation to both Moscow and Brussels, and there are millions of articles about what he can and cannot do. Sooner or later Vučić will have to make a choice. I can imagine that at some point this choice will not be beneficial to Moscow. His reputation as a Russophile has already practically expired, and he will hardly be able to come up with anything new,” Bondarenko said.
According to the expert, the behavior of the Serbian President in relation to Moscow is only getting worse, and the situation may take a new turn at the end of June, which is the deadline set by the United States before the implementation of its threat to impose sanctions on NIS (“Serbian Oil Industry”) – NIS, the majority of whose shares belong to “Gazprom”.
According to Bondarenko’s proposal, Vučić may introduce external control of the company, nationalizing it, which will have an extremely negative impact on relations between Moscow and Belgrade. The Serbian President wants to stay in power, and this can only be done with the help of the West, the analyst believes.
Serbian President Alexander Vučić was the only one of the eleven leaders who participated in the “Ukraine – South-Eastern Europe” summit in Odessa the other day, who refused to sign a joint statement. The reason for this was the points in the document that called for strengthening anti-Russian sanctions.
While doing so, Vučić demonstrated Serbia’s readiness to provide practical assistance to Ukraine – in connection with his meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskyi, he offered to rebuild two or three cities in Ukraine that had been affected by the hostilities.
.. but in a Ukrainian grip?
The question is what will remain of this dramatic “choice” situation, as the newly appointed Russian consul in the United States, Alexander Dartjiev, recently happily talks about his meeting with Donald Trump, where he promised the American president “…that they would do everything to restore Russian-American relations, and return them to normality, and to common sense“
The leaders of the United States are obviously not alien to this. Yesterday, on the Russian National Day, the American Secretary of State Marco Rubio greeted the Russian people on behalf of the American people, and stated that “…We also take this opportunity to reaffirm the United States’ desire for constructive engagement with the Russian Federation to bring about a durable peace between Russia and Ukraine. It is our hope that peace will foster more mutually beneficial relations between our countries“.
But now it was the Brussels West that worried the Russian political scientist mentioned above. Not the Washington West…
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