Djuric: Serbia Runs a Balanced Foreign Policy

Foreign Minister Marko Djuric said Serbia runs a balanced foreign policy and carefully follows every geopolitical shift. The message came one day after Serbia opened a strategic dialogue with the United States in Washington, at a moment when Belgrade is trying to keep ties with traditional partners in the East and with the West at the same time.

Djuric said Serbia wants good relations with all relevant players in the world, traditional friends included. It is a formula Serbian diplomacy has used for years: we do not pick camps, we pursue interest. What is different now is that the formula is being tested in a sharpened geopolitical moment, when small states are increasingly pressed to line up clearly.

Why the balance message, and why now?

The timing is no accident. Opening a strategic dialogue with Washington could easily be read as a turn toward the West, so the statement on balanced policy is an attempt to soften that reading immediately. Djuric sends a double message: Belgrade talks to America, but it is not abandoning the relationships it built elsewhere.

Energy sits at the center of that calculation. The minister stressed that, unlike others, Serbia has not suffered hours-long total collapses of its power grid. The point cuts both ways: toward the domestic public as proof of stability, and toward partners as an argument that the existing arrangements pay off. Behind it lies the expectation that the gas arrangement with Russia will be extended through the end of the year, one of the most sensitive points of Serbian foreign policy.

Balance, though, has a price. The deeper the dialogue with Washington, the louder the questions about energy dependence on Moscow. Serbia is trying to drive down the middle of a road whose lanes keep narrowing.

What does balance mean in practice?

For Serbian diplomacy, a balanced policy is not new but a long-running framework. What changes is the context: the war in Ukraine, pressure to align foreign-policy decisions with the European Union, and the parallel interest in cheap Russian gas mean every move now carries more weight than before.

Djuric presented the leadership’s diplomatic activity as proof that balance works in practice, not just as a slogan. Visits, meetings, and new channels of communication, by that logic, show that Belgrade manages to talk to everyone. Critics would say that a policy without a clear commitment must eventually choose, and that postponing the choice is not a strategy but buying time.

The next test will be the gas arrangement itself and the course of the strategic dialogue with the United States. If both tracks continue in parallel, the balance thesis holds. If one starts to choke the other, Serbia will have to spell out where the limits of the maneuver lie.

Can Serbia permanently hold an equal distance from East and West, or is balance simply a postponed choice?