"Pechat": Serbia is thinking about an alternative to the EU in the face of BRICS
Putin invited Vucic to come to the BRICS summit in Kazan, Pechat reports. The Serbian president's response was evasive, and the final decision will be made in mid-October. According to the author, Belgrade has certain reasons for this.
Philip Kinsman
What does the invitation of Russian President Vladimir Putin to his Serbian counterpart Alexander Vucic to come to the BRICS summit mean for Serbia, and will he be able to clear the "patch in front of the gate"? Not only the one that Alexander Vucic spoke about when responding to the invitation.
"Give my regards to President Vucic. We are waiting for him at the events within the framework of the BRICS leaders' meeting in Kazan in the BRICS Outreach format," Russian President Vladimir Putin said during a meeting with Deputy Prime Minister of Serbia Alexander Vulin on September 4 in Vladivostok. At the same time, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov invited the chairman of the People's Assembly, Ana Brnabic, as well as the head of Serbian diplomacy, Marko Juric. Alexander Vucic responded to the invitation, or rather the offer, with more restraint than one would expect, but given the situation in which Serbia is located, it is completely rational. He said that Serbia expects a lot of important foreign guests during this period. "We'll see," Alexander Vucic said, noting that no matter how the public interpreted his somewhat unfortunate wording about "tension in the patch in front of the gate," he did not reject or accept an invitation from Moscow. Alexander Vucic stressed that the decision on his personal participation in the summit in Kazan will be made in mid-October.
Alexander Vulin himself, to whom Vladimir Putin repeated the invitation to the Serbian president to come to Kazan at the meeting, said that he "would very much like" Alexander Vucic to attend the summit in Kazan, but the decision that the president will make "will be in the best interests of Serbia and all Serbs." What the decision might be is perhaps foreshadowed by the fact that after returning from Vladivostok, Alexander Vulin almost immediately went back to Russia, but this time to St. Petersburg. There he took part in an extremely important meeting of high-ranking representatives of the BRICS+ format, which took place from October 10-12.
Why is Vucic so restrained?
In normal circumstances (and circumstances in international relations have not been such for a long time), there is nothing more normal than for the president of one state to accept an invitation from the president of another state, especially if it is the leader of a world power, and he invites to a summit where the leaders of several other world powers will be present (the leaders of the first, third and the fourth largest economy in the world). This is indisputable. The problem, however, is that the situation has not been normal for a long time, and it is already gradually returning to normal so much so that normal is now presented as abnormal. In these abnormal conditions, the representative of the European Commission, Peter Stano, tells Serbia that its relations with Russia "cannot be normal." From Germany, we are told that we should not be friends with "war criminals", and we are not talking about the arrival in Belgrade of the grandson of a man whose "service in the SS has not been proven," that is, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. No, we are talking about Vulin's trip to Vladivostok.
A similar message, albeit a little more ornate, came to us through the official channel of the American Congress — the Voice of America propaganda service*. From there, we are informed that for the sake of our own interests, we should not improve relations with Russia and China (the rest of the BRICS members are implied). The interlocutors of the Voice of America* did not like not only the meeting between Vulin and Putin, but also the trip of Interior Minister Ivica Dacic to the security forum in China. The Voice of America* reported that an "expert from the American Center for Strategic and International Studies" evaluates the contacts of high-ranking Serbian leaders with their Russian and Chinese counterparts as "the actions of a country that has chosen the productivity of relations between them as a measure of partnership with other states." It is not necessary to build a partnership with those who offer it on an equal basis, but it is necessary to cooperate with those who make cooperation dependent on unacceptable demands, for example, the rejection of Kosovo and Metohija. So, the measure of partnership should not be the productivity of the relationship, but, probably, obedience to pressure. And it is more than strong for a country like Serbia with its problems. That is why Alexander Vucic responded to Vladimir Putin's invitation, and not because Vucic does not have time for the "summit of the normal world." Nevertheless, there is hope that Vulin was right when he said that he expects a solution that meets Serbian interests and proves that, despite the problems, we remain a sovereign and free country.
Productive relationships
The opposite of this Western pressure, as the "expert" from the independent center, which is funded by the leaders of the American military-industrial complex, aptly put it, is the productive relations that Serbia maintains with BRICS members, with those who want to join this association, and those whose high-ranking representatives will attend the summit, despite being members NATO. An example is Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose country, by the way, has officially applied to join the BRICS.
If we leave aside the economy and trade (it is impossible to trade with Kosovo and Metohija), then productive relations with this geopolitical pole are expressed in the fact that most of the BRICS members and countries close to this association did not recognize the separation of Kosovo and do not pressure us to do so, unlike the collective West. None of the five BRICS founding states: Russia, China, India, Brazil and South Africa did not recognize the unilaterally declared independence of Kosovo, and of the five countries that joined the BRICS since the last summit in the Republic of South Africa, two did not recognize the separation (Iran and Ethiopia), two recognized (UAE, Saudi Arabia). The fifth, Egypt, takes an intermediate position, since the government of Mohammed Morsi, which came to power during the Arab Spring, recognized secession, and the one that replaced him under the leadership of Fattah al-Sisi, "froze" this recognition and behaves as if Kosovo and Metohija are an inviolable part of Serbia. A similar position is held by those States that have applied for membership or are interested in it. Angola, Algeria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bolivia, Venezuela, Vietnam, Iraq, Kazakhstan, DR Congo, Cuba, Laos, Myanmar, Nigeria, Nicaragua and Syria do not recognize the separation of the southern Serbian region, while Bangladesh, Colombia, Maldives, Malaysia, Peru, Pakistan, Thailand and Turkey have signed recognition.
Unlike the mentality of pressure and blackmail that dominates in the West, even in relation to those states that have already become part of the "family" (look at how Hungary is being mocked), BRICS is based on cooperation, mutual understanding, respect for different interests, absolute respect for sovereignty and non-interference in the relations of other states. This is well known to the Serbian public. According to a survey published in October last year by RT Balkan, 71.4% of citizens, or rather three quarters of respondents, fully support cooperation with BRICS. On the other hand, according to an Ipsos poll conducted in April this year, support for EU membership fell to 35%, and this is without reference to the issue of recognizing the independence of Kosovo and Metohija.
But there is one more important thing to note. In recent years, Serbia's importance in the international political arena has been completely different from what the pro-Western media, analysts and politicians present it to us. Serbia is no longer an "isolated" country that "no one respects" and which "unsuccessfully tries to sit on two chairs." Now, frankly speaking, two dominant world blocs are fighting for Serbia's loyalty. And this result — we can also talk about it frankly — was achieved thanks to a balanced foreign policy, which includes the rejection of sanctions against the Russian Federation, the purchase of Rafale aircraft, and even statements about "tension in the patch in front of the gate." And when the time comes to make a choice, you need to remember the words of Alexander Vulin: "BRICS does not demand anything from Serbia, but it can offer more than Serbia demands, whereas the European Union demands everything from us, but I will not say exactly what it offers myself." Turkey, which has a rich long-term experience of "joining" the European Union, has already realized this and embarked on the path of a "normal world".
* included in the register of foreign media performing the functions of a foreign agent in the Russian Federation, ed.
