Vucic to Weltwoche: The Worst Is Yet to Come

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said in an interview with the Swiss weekly Weltwoche, published on July 24, that the worst of the global conflict is still ahead and that, as he put it, everyone is preparing for war. The conversation took place as Belgrade faces mounting pressure to align its foreign policy with the European Union, and the president used the moment to reaffirm that Serbia stays on its course of military neutrality.

At the center of the interview is a bleak forecast of the war in Ukraine. Vucic said he expects Russia to step up its efforts in late September and early November, reasoning that in a conflict of this kind someone eventually has to win. He judged that Western leaders underestimate Russia, and that the rhetoric of escalation will not force Moscow to surrender, but may, in his reading, produce the opposite effect.

Why did Belgrade refuse to sign the Ukraine conclusions?

Vucic explained that Serbia did not sign the conclusions from the Ukraine conference because of point 11, which concerns the creation of a special tribunal against Russia. In his words, endorsing such a document would clash with Belgrade’s standing position, which avoids steps that Moscow would read as joining the sanctions and legal campaign against it.

The consequences of that decision, the president said, are already visible. Because of the missing signature, the European Union has, by his interpretation, blocked the opening of new negotiating clusters on Serbia’s path to membership. That revives an old dilemma of Serbian foreign policy: how long a country can maintain an EU candidacy while refusing to fully follow the Union’s common foreign and security policy.

The president said Serbia accepts that price. He described military neutrality as a matter of principle rather than tactics, and stressed that the country holds to it despite the economic consequences such a course carries. In practical terms, that means Belgrade continues to reject sanctions on Russia while insisting it takes no side among the actors in the war.

Neutrality under growing pressure

The interview comes at a moment when the room for maneuver in Serbian foreign policy is narrowing. On one side stands the obligation to align with Brussels, measured partly by the pace at which clusters open. On the other are the energy and political ties with Moscow and a domestic public sensitive to any drift toward sanctions. The president’s message in Weltwoche is an attempt to address both audiences, domestic and international, at once.

Vucic’s forecast of escalation after September deliberately shifts the focus from internal topics to the broader geopolitical plane. Instead of a debate about clusters and Brussels’ conditions, the foreground now holds an image of a world that, by his account, is preparing for a larger conflict, with Serbia cast as an island of neutrality that refuses to pick a side.

The opposition has argued for years that such neutrality is unsustainable and that delaying a clear choice costs the country credibility on its European path. The government, for its part, insists that this very balancing act is what preserves both Serbia’s negotiating position and its peace. The enlargement conference and the dynamics of cluster openings in the autumn will show which side has judged the cost of this course more accurately.

Can Serbia sustain military neutrality and the price of blocked clusters, or will the pressure after September push Belgrade toward a clearer choice?