Vucic on Zelensky Visit: We Chose Serbia's Chair

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic appeared on August 9 on the MD MEETS podcast hosted by Mathias Dopfner, chairman of the media company Axel Springer, where he laid out for the first time his reasoning behind hosting Volodymyr Zelensky in Belgrade a day earlier. The interviewer was a German publisher, the audience Western, and the questions circled back to the accusation Vucic hears loudest at home: what Belgrade gained by receiving the Ukrainian president, and what it cost him in Moscow.

The answer was shorter than expected.

“I am not here to please the Russians, the Ukrainians or anyone else, but to work in Serbia’s interest.”

Vucic was responding to claims that the meeting with Zelensky amounted to a betrayal of Serbia’s partnership with Russia, claims that in the past two days have come even from parts of the public that normally back him. Later in the conversation he added that he is now branded the biggest traitor for meeting the Ukrainian president, “as if that wasn’t my job.”

Why did Vucic receive Zelensky?

The main topic of the Belgrade talks, he said, was not the war but the European path of both countries. Vucic specified that joint drone production with Ukraine was not discussed at all, that the drone factory under construction is a project with Israeli partners and will open by the end of September, and that instead the two leaders talked about a free trade agreement, the participation of a Ukrainian company in infrastructure projects in Serbia, and the reconstruction of smaller Ukrainian towns.

Pressed on the argument that such a policy lacks a clear allegiance, he answered with an image that has already taken hold in Serbia.

“I think it was a very useful meeting for both of us. I know that literally no one likes or appreciates this kind of policy. Everyone kept saying: ‘You have too many different chairs, you have to pick one and that’s it.’ Well, we picked one. It’s Serbia’s chair. Why do I say that? Because we have our own strategic goal, and that is full membership in the European Union.”

He immediately attached to that goal a timeline that offers little comfort in Belgrade. Vucic said Serbia cannot expect to join the European Union before 2030, and possibly not even then, which is why he raised with Zelensky the question of a single market and open borders within Europe, an idea he had written about before and signed jointly with Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama.

Fewer contacts with Putin

The part of the interview likely to be read most closely in Moscow concerns what did not happen. Vucic said he never discussed Zelensky’s visit with Vladimir Putin, and that he has had fewer contacts with the Russian president lately than before.

“I did not talk to Putin about Zelensky’s arrival, because I don’t announce my political agenda to anyone, since Serbia is no one’s puppet.”

A conversation with Putin is coming, however. Vucic said he will have to speak with him within a week or within a month, over Serbia’s Oil Industry (NIS) and the problems caused by its ownership structure being under sanctions. That is where the limits of the whole construction show: Vucic announces his political schedule to no one, yet the ownership of the country’s largest energy company still requires a phone call to Moscow.

Kosovo as an argument, again

Dopfner pressed the point that peace negotiations should not blur the line between aggressor and victim. Vucic agreed, then turned the question back to Serbia, recalling that after an aggression carried out by 19 NATO countries, Serbia was left without 14 percent of its internationally recognized territory, without a decision from the United Nations Security Council. He described the seizure of that territory as opening a Pandora’s box and said Serbia supports Ukraine’s territorial integrity, while also demanding peace.

The parallel is not new, but it took on a different context yesterday. As we reported after the visit, Zelensky reaffirmed in Belgrade Ukraine’s position on Kosovo, a position that does not match Serbia’s own. Vucic now put the same argument to his German interviewer, aware the answer would not please him, carrying the disagreement from Belgrade straight to a Western audience instead of avoiding it.

A war with no end before spring

The sharpest assessment in the conversation had nothing to do with Serbia.

“I believe we are at the beginning of a bigger war.”

Vucic said he does not expect the war to end this year or before next spring, explaining that one side has to come out stronger and victorious, one way or another, for the war to end, and that he sees no room for compromise in the current stalemate. He added that no one wants peace, that everyone wants the other side to lose, warned against waiting for a complete exhaustion of Russian troops, and reminded listeners that Russia is a nuclear power.

Serbia’s own calendar is more concrete than that timeline. Vucic said in the same conversation that elections in Serbia will most likely be held in October or early November, and that he will accept the result even if the so called Students’ List wins by half a percentage point. The bill for a policy without a fixed allegiance, in other words, comes due before any of the deadlines raised in this interview are met, and it will be paid by voters in Serbia, not by the interlocutors in Berlin, Moscow and Kyiv.