Around the Kalemegdan fortress, in the historic center of Belgrade, Putin's face is in every souvenir shop. The blue, red, and white of the Russian and Serbian flags (distinguished only by the order of their colors) merge into magnet, mug, and T-shirt prints, under slogans such as “Russia and Serbia, brothers forever.” . From the counter side, Vlad, who runs the stall, explains that the ones with the Russian president's face stamped on them are the best sellers among Serbian buyers. He also has T-shirts with the Z, the symbol of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and even with the silhouette of Ratko Mladic, the general who orchestrated the genocide perpetrated in the small Bosnian town of Srebrenica.
Russian influence in Serbia is a reality, which is not only materialized in the form of memories, but also in data: 80% of the population is against applying sanctions against Russia for the war, 82% is against Serbia integrating the Atlantic Alliance and more than 50% are against the integration of the European Union. To this must be added the dependence on Russian gas, the daily flights between the two capitals and the cultural and historical affinity, based on the Orthodox and Slavic brotherhood.
Not surprisingly, the position on the war in Ukraine is clear: according to a survey by the Open Society Foundation, up to 63% of Serbs believe that the West is responsible for the outbreak of the war between Russia and Ukraine, and three quarters believes that Moscow was forced into the war because of NATO's expansion intentions. However, the key to Russia's appeal to the Serbian public is neither Slavic friendship, nor economic investment, nor a major soft power campaign. It is simply the idea that Russia is not the West. "It is a more anti-Western sentiment than pro-Putin," corroborates the journalist Sasa Dragojlo, from the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, in statements to La Vanguardia.
Serbian mistrust of NATO is neither new nor unfounded. The bombing campaign on Belgrade carried out by the Atlantic Alliance under the orders of Javier Solana during the Kosovo war has not healed in the memory of the city. The attacks, in response to the ethnic cleansing that Serb troops were carrying out on the Albanian population in Kosovo, lasted for almost three months, from March 24 to June 10, 1999, killing nearly 1,000 soldiers and 500 civilians.
Some wounds that have been voluntarily exposed to build a narrative: the Serbs are victims of the West. Badly damaged in the 1999 bombing, the Defense Ministry building has not been repaired since it was vandalized nearly 25 years ago now, and is Belgrade's most famous ruin. Since 2005 it has been considered a protected monument of culture that symbolizes the suffering of the Serbian population. Today part of the rubble is covered by a huge billboard with army propaganda: “Life is an eternal struggle. Who dares, can do it; who does not know fear, advances”.
This resentment, disappointment with the costs of the country's transition to democracy and a market economy that does not favor the population have allowed Moscow's speeches to penetrate, presenting the war in Ukraine as a confrontation with NATO and the United States. Joined. America or Russia. This is the dichotomy with which the majority of Serbs understand the invasion of Ukraine, and posed in these terms, there is no doubt who should be supported. Surrounded by figures with Putin's faces, Vlad is clear: "Given a choice between Russia and NATO, we will not choose those who bombed us." Speaking on the BBC last month, Serbian MP Aleksandar Jerkovic used the same reasoning: "We are not supporting Russia against Ukraine, we are supporting Russia against NATO and the West, which are the ones who bombed us."
Since the invasion of Ukraine, the Serbian government, a candidate for the EU and a traditional ally of Moscow, has been maintaining a delicate balance between the two powers. It has not joined the sanctions against the Kremlin, but it has condemned the Russian aggression and the violation of the territorial integrity of Ukraine.
More recently, the question of recognition of Kosovo, which has been revived with the Franco-German plan to normalize relations, has recalled the bitter aftertaste of this separation never accepted by the Serbs. While the Western bloc countries supported – in the majority – the independence of Kosovo, Russia has always defended the territorial integrity of Serbia. In fact, he used his veto power in the UN Security Council to block its recognition.
“Serbia without Kosovo is like a body without a heart”, says a mural on the outskirts of Belgrade, which evokes the recurring argument that Kosovo was the origin of Serbian civilization. Now the Serbs feel that belonging to the European space is conditional on accepting the presence of their former province in international organizations. Perhaps this is also why the exhaustion regarding the EU candidacy is becoming more and more evident. "We have been on this path [that of European integration] for 20 years," said Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic in a recent interview with Euronews. "We hope to enter, but we do not plan to give up our ties with Russia or China," he said. The demands of the EU to integrate it seem like a receding horizon. “The need for reforms has been interpreted as colonizing behavior [by the EU], and it has created a lot of hostility in the eyes of many poor people,” says Sasa Dragojlo. "There is the perception that how civilized we are is measured," she says.
Vucic, who was information minister in the Slobodan Milosevic administration, knows all too well the power of controlling the media, which he used to silence journalists during the Kosovo war. For the past ten years, pro-government media have forged a pro-Putin environment by spouting Russia stories left and right to win popularity among more reactionary voters, who are drawn to the tradition-promoting Kremlin narrative. "In order to win conservative votes, Vucic is creating a parallel reality through the media," says Dragojlo.
Straddling Brussels and Moscow, Vucic has been acting like a tightrope walker for years. This double game has worked in his favor so far because he has enjoyed a lot of investment from the EU without losing alliances with Russia. But since the invasion of Ukraine, the pro-Russian narrative has gotten out of hand, and now it is the adherence of his own voter base to this discourse that limits the country's political options.
