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Vučić was scheduled to travel to Brussels for the
formal opening of EU membership talks, and to the United States on
an inaugural Air Serbia flight to New York, followed by talks with
American officials on June 21. But the visits were cut short by
Russia’s growing concern that Serbia was finally moving into Western
institutions.
Moscow has threatened to revise or renege on a
series of economic agreements with Belgrade if the country pursues
deeper integration with the EU. Sergei Zheleznyak, vice president of
Russia’s State Duma, has also warned Serbia not to follow Montenegro
toward NATO membership. Instructively, Kremlin threats against the
Montenegrin leadership failed to divert Podgorica from its Western
path.
Vučić made an unannounced visit to Russian
President Vladimir Putin at the end of May. This culminated in
Kremlin demands that pro-Russian ministers be included in Serbia’s
new government. Putin reportedly insisted that the Socialists, led
by Foreign Minister Ivica Dačić, must remain in the administration
because of their pro-Russian stance. Underlying Putin’s message was
that Belgrade should desist from rushing into the EU or forging
closer ties with NATO. During a recent visit to Moscow, Dačić
asserted that Serbia would not become part of the EU at the cost of
damaging relations with Russia.
Despite a decade of effort, Russia has few genuine
allies in the Balkans. Croatia and Slovenia have joined both the EU
and NATO. Albania is also a NATO member, soon to be joined by
Montenegro. Macedonia and Kosova also aim to enter both Western
institutions, while Bosnia & Herzegovina remains paralyzed by its
internal divisions. This leaves Serbia on the front line of Kremlin
attention.
Serbia is the Kremlin’s most reliable political
link, not because of any Slavic-Orthodox fraternity, but as a
consequence of dispassionate political calculation. Moscow has spent
the past decade impregnating itself into Serbian society, especially
by disseminating propaganda through the local media, Internet, and
social networks. Kremlin spokesmen and their media colleagues focus
on three themes to influence Serb politicians and citizens:
historical solidarity, the pernicious West and defense of
traditional values.
Moscow consistently appeals to pan-Slavic and
pan-Orthodox ties between Russia and Serbia, and amplifies Russia’s
assistance in liberating it from Ottoman Turkey in the 19th century.
It ignores historical episodes when the two states were in conflict,
especially after World War II, when Belgrade broke with Moscow and
Soviet propaganda vilified Yugoslavia for betraying the principles
of international communism, and threatened to invade it.
After Yugoslavia’s collapse in the 1990s,
nationalist politicians in Belgrade called for Russian solidarity,
whether over preserving Yugoslavia’s integrity, carving out a
Greater Serbia, or retaining control over Kosova—which gained
independence in February 2008 and is recognized by the United States
and most EU and NATO members.
Moscow exploits and deepens Serbia’s grievances
against the United States and NATO to demonstrate how it protects
vulnerable states from disintegration and foreign domination.
Russian state propaganda has vilified the West for allegedly
engineering state collapse, favoring Serbia’s neighbors, and carving
up Serbia itself through a NATO attack. It now claims that the West
seeks to subdue and dominate Serbia, tearing it away from Mother
Russia. The objective is to undermine Western institutions and
discredit local politicians who favor the EU, NATO and the United
States.
Such strident messages repeated by nationalist
Serbs are intended to appeal to anti-globalist, Euroskeptic,
anti-American, ultra-conservative, and religious Orthodox
constituencies in which Russia masquerades as the defender of
traditional values and the EU and the United States are depicted as
deviant and immoral. Russia’s Orthodox Church also upholds close
ties with the Serbian Orthodox Church to coordinate their
promulgation of ultra-conservatism, anti-liberalism and
anti-Westernism.
Protests by citizens over a rebuilding project in
Belgrade, financed by the United Arab Emirates and supported by the
prime minister, have been portrayed as an anti-government plot.
Russia has injected itself in this domestic standoff as the
protector of a legitimate government against a potential “colored
revolution” manufactured by Washington and Brussels. Both the
European Commission and the U.S. ambassador to Serbia vehemently
deny that they have played any role in street demonstrations.
The Vučić government must be careful not to fall
into Russia’s trap by repressing public opposition or parroting
conspiracy theories that will alienate it from the EU and the United
States. Belgrade can no longer play the role of non-aligned
Yugoslavia during the Cold War by balancing West and East. If Serbia
does not resolutely pursue the path of EU and eventual NATO entry,
it will become increasingly embroiled in anti-Western intrigues
concocted by the Kremlin.
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