Author’s article by Dr. Orhan Dragaš, director of the International Security Institute, for The National Interest: https://nationalinterest.org/feature/serbia-not-russian-ally-212774

Any lingering doubts whether Serbia is oriented toward the West were dispelled in Belgrade on July 19, when Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and European Commission Executive Vice President for the European Green Deal Maroš Šefčovič signed an agreement that makes Serbia and its vast lithium reserves a focal point in a joint European strategy for countering China.

The Serbian government recently lifted a moratorium on British-Australian Rio Tinto’s lithium mining project, following a two-year freeze due to environmental protests. Serbia’s lithium reserves are the largest proven lithium deposits in Europe and one of the largest in the world. The Serbian government shunned overtures from China and instead signed an “historic” strategic partnership pact with the European Union regarding its lithium deposits, opting to give access to this critical material only to its Western partners. This move by the government in Belgrade will prove to be a decisive and irreversible step by Serbia towards the EU and the West.

Despite such indications of Serbia’s strategic orientation, Belgrade has been regarded as a close ally of Russia in the Balkans, and its aspirations to join the EU, with which it has been negotiating for over 10 years, have been often interpreted as insincere. The label of closeness to Russia is a legacy of the tragic policies of Serbia’s first post-communist leader, Slobodan Milošević, in the 1990s. Instead of leading Serbia on the path of building democracy and a market economy, Milošević confronted the country with the West, its historical ally, culminating in a three-month NATO bombing campaign in 1999. The strong anti-Western sentiment that developed at the time has persisted among a large number of Serbs to this day, thanks to subsequent faltering governments and the political expediency of tapping into this anger.

Today, however, there is ample evidence that convincingly refutes the common image of Serbia as a Russian branch in the Balkans and demonstrates its strategic orientation toward the West.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić and his centre-right government have won successive elections by having to mobilize the support of an electorate that overwhelmingly views Russia as a country helping to preserve Serbia’s sovereignty over Kosovo and the safety of Serbs in Kosovo. The inherited anti-Western sentiment from the 1999 NATO bombing and surrounding Kosovo’s declaration of independence in 2008 continues to have a strong influence on this electorate.

However, despite this challenging domestic political environment related to Russia, the main directions of Serbian state policy have long since ceased to coincide with Moscow’s wishes, expectations, and plans. In Moscow, Serbian President Vučić is considered an ally of the Kremlin only on paper and is instead viewed as a leader strategically aligned with the West, EU, and, increasingly, United States.

The first major problem for Russian interests in the Balkans was Vučić’s shift regarding resolving the post-conflict crisis over Kosovo. In contrast to all his predecessors at the head of Serbia, he entered into direct negotiations with the Kosovo authorities on the normalisation of mutual relations through the mediation of the EU. This process has been ongoing for more than ten years now, with ups and downs, but still has an end in sight, especially since US diplomacy became heavily involved in mediation a few years ago.

Moscow’s strategic interest in the Balkans is to avoid long-term resolution of the post-war hotspots, seeking for them to remain a potential source of conflict and Russian leverage for as long as possible, preferably permanently. In this way, all the Balkan states that fought each other along ethnic lines in the 1990s would remain permanently outside Euro-Atlantic integration, a kind of backward, corrupt, and unintegrated black hole in the middle of Europe, and therefore vulnerable to Moscow’s corrupt political, economic, and security influence.

Russia portrays its relationship with Serbia to the Serbian electorate as one based on a sense of Slavic and Orthodox solidarity. This deception comes to light from time to time, including on the issue of Kosovo. Russia, like Serbia, does not recognise Kosovo as an independent state, but Vladimir Putin has repeatedly used the case of Kosovo’s unilateral secession and recognition by many Western countries as an argument for his forcible annexations of parts of Ukraine.

While Serbia sees itself as a moderately developed European economy and a member of the EU, Russia wants Serbia to remain permanently outside this circle, trapped in unresolved relations with its neighbours. While Serbia wants to be part of the European economies’ technological and industrial chains, the Kremlin wants it to exist outside of this system, dependent Russian energy sources. While Serbia wants to solve its security challenges in partnership with NATO, which President Vucic refers to as the guarantor of safety for the Serbian population in Kosovo, Russia wants to keep the country dependent through arms sales, deeper intelligence penetration, and its local proxies.

Given that the Russian strategy is centered on the deep rift between Serbia and Kosovo, Vucic’s entry into the process of finding a lasting solution to Kosovo was a significant setback for the Kremlin, a move that remains unforgiven in Moscow to this day. What followed for Russia was Serbia’s rather „unbrotherly“ behaviour in connection with the Ukrainian crisis, not just since February 2022, when Russia began its full-scale invasion, but much earlier, since 2014 and Russia’s annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea.

Even then, the Serbian president sided with Ukraine and supported its territorial integrity, including Crimea. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, this Serbian state policy has been confirmed in the UN General Assembly at least four times, with Belgrade voting to condemn the Russian invasion and calling for an immediate Russian withdrawal from Ukraine. Serbia also voted in favour of Russia’s expulsion from the UN Human Rights Council and signed a number of international and regional political declarations condemning Russian aggression, including the last one in June at President Zelensky’s Peace Conference in Switzerland.

Frequent reports of Serbia supplying large quantities of weapons to Kyiv have infuriated Moscow more than Serbia’s clear opposition to Russia in international forums. As the Financial Times reported in June, Serbia supplied Kyiv with much-needed artillery ammunition worth up to $800 million via intermediary buyer countries, which amounts to 30 percent of all munitions supplied to Ukraine by European countries. Although Serbia is not formally part of the 50-member coalition providing military support to Ukraine, this scale makes it a larger sponsor of Ukraine’s defence than many other countries that are officially part of the bloc of arms suppliers to Kyiv and many NATO member-states.

Sergei Mardan, one of the Kremlin’s top media propagandists, recently called Serbia „the last whore“ because of Serbia’s security assistance to Ukraine. The Kremlin has never permitted Serbia, like Ukraine, to demonstrate its independent interests and desire to forge its own path, which does not lead to Moscow but rather to the European Union and strategic partnership with the United States. Therefore, Serbia faces the risk of potential Russian retaliation, a risk its leadership is willing to accept due to the support it receives from its Western allies for this resistance.

However, even this condensed list of arguments, demonstrating Serbia’s unwavering solidarity with Ukraine during its most challenging times, frequently fails to deter the label of „closest Russian ally“ not only in the Balkans but in Europe. Many in the media, politicians, and experts on the Balkans who have been perpetuating the narrative of a Serbian-Russian alliance, often point out that Serbia has not imposed economic sanctions against Russia, which all of Europe has done.

That is true, but the reality is that Serbia abides by EU sanctions against Russia. Moreover, these critics lose sight of the fact that the reason for the Serbian government’s non-imposition of de jure sanctions is not based on its support for Russia but rather the Kremlin’s unique ability to bring instability and social unrest to Serbia. Moscow’s capacity to exploit the continued anger in Serbian society associated with the NATO bombing and Kosovo’s declaration of independence by mobilizing its proxies in the country should not be underestimated. This is a reality that the any Serbian government must take into account. In addition, Serbia is still highly dependent on gas imports from Russia due to a series of bad decisions in the recent past, when the country missed opportunities to diversify its gas import infrastructure.

However, similarly to a majority of EU member-states, the country has begun to methodically liberate itself from this grip, especially since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. For instance, Serbia opened a gas interconnector to neighbouring Bulgaria in December of last year, enabling it to import gas from Azerbaijan and potentially US LNG. Serbia now has physical access to gas sources from the Caspian region and the liquefied natural gas terminal in the Greek port of Alexandroupolis, making Greece an important partner for Serbia’s gas supply.

Although Serbia is indeed one of the few European exceptions when it comes to sanctions against Russia, its decision seems far „cleaner“ than that of many other European countries, whose companies continue to operate in and with Russia and make fantastic profits behind the backs of their governments that have imposed sanctions. Moreover, Russia’s exports to Serbia are mostly limited to energy and Serbian exports to Russia are largely agricultural, while Serbia’s overall exports to Russia were nearly cut in half during the first year of Russia’s full-scale invasion.

The Serbian economy has a stable and irreversible link to Western technology and supply chains. Trade with EU markets accounts for 2/3 of Serbia’s total exchange of goods and services with the rest of the world, while the United States is Serbia’s largest trade partner in services. No less than ¾ of total investments in Serbia and 2/3 of FDI come from the EU. According to both parameters, Russia and its economy have an almost insignificant share of Serbia’s economy. Serbia’s relations with the US are based on a mutual strategic determination for Serbia to join the EU, and entails very active bilateral defence and political cooperation. The vast majority of decision-makers in the U.S. government view Serbia as a “factor of stability in the Western Balkan,” which is how U.S. diplomats often describe Belgrade.

These are the indicators that demonstrate the true nature of Serbian policy towards Russia, the EU, and the West.

In this respect, the Serbian government’s approval of the Rio Tinto project to develop the largest lithium deposits in Europe, reject China’s interest in Serbian lithium, and limit access to this critical material to the West should dispel all previous doubts about Serbia’s pro-Western course. By signing a critical materials strategic partnership agreement with the EU in the presence of German Chancellor Scholz, Serbia became a key contributor to the EU coalition on securing critical minerals, of which lithium is at the forefront. Considering that the projected annual quantities of Serbian lithium are sufficient for the production of batteries for 1.1 million cars—almost 20 percent of Europe’s annual EV production—the country will thus become a first-class European partner, which will undoubtedly accelerate its full membership in the EU.

Russia knows that it cannot offer Serbia an alternative for its national ambitions, but it does not want to give up the influence it has built up over the course of history. Its approach to Serbia is therefore based on myths about historical brotherhood, which it spreads through a carefully cultivated and financed network of propaganda, fake news, and intelligence activities. These channels are highly effective in engaging the Serbian public, but regrettably for Moscow, they do not influence Serbia’s state policy.