On the sidelines of an economic forum in Vladivostok on September 4, Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandar Vulin made it clear to Russian President Vladimir Putin that Belgrade is a strategic partner and an "ally of Russia."
Putin reciprocated the warmth, offering his greetings to President Aleksandar Vucic and then inviting his Serbian counterpart to attend the upcoming BRICS summit in the Russian city of Kazan.
This Slavic show of solidarity, however, didn't sit well with the European Union. The next day, EU foreign affairs spokesman Peter Stano said that "maintaining or even increasing the ties with Russia during the time of its illegal aggression against the Ukrainian people is not compatible with EU values."
Vulin's visit to Russia was perhaps even harder for the EU to swallow as there have been signs recently that Serbia is moving closer to the bloc. At the end of August, Serbia signed a deal with France to replace its aging MiGs with Rafale jets. And in July, Serbia signed a deal with the EU to develop a lithium mining project to produce batteries for electric cars.
The mixed messages, however, are business as usual for Serbia under Vucic, who for his 12 years in power has pursued a multi-vector diplomatic course, balancing Serbia's relations with the West, Russia, and China.
Those hoping Serbia's recent business deals were a sign of the country's wholehearted embrace of the West might have been disappointed.
Ivan Krastev, who chairs the Center for Liberal Strategies in Sofia and is a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, told RFE/RL that the deal with France was not a case of Serbia "simply taking sides once and for all."
That was clear when Vucic spoke at a press conference with the French president on August 29, he said, "I know that Emmanuel [Macron] would like me to introduce sanctions against Russia. But we did not do it, and we are not ashamed of our decision."
On the surface, the recent deals with Germany and France may look like a kind of "European moment" for Serbia, said Vessela Tcherneva, the deputy director of the European Council on Foreign Relations.
"But what makes me a bit skeptical," she told RFE/RL, "is the fact that we know that beyond the pure trade relationship and the pure security dimension of this, there is also the dimension of democracy and the pro-European forces in Serbia. Where does this leave them?" she asked.
Spreading The Wealth
Vucic does not have the outlook or pedigree of a natural, Westernizing democrat. In the late 1990s, he served as Serbian information minister in the final years of Slobodan Milosevic's regime. He was a high-ranking official in the ultranationalist Serbian Radical Party, although he distanced himself from the party in 2008.
Whereas Milosevic was a pariah internationally, known as the "butcher of the Balkans" for his role in the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, Vucic has been largely cooperative on the world stage, seen by EU and Western powers as indispensable and instrumental to stability in the Balkans.
An international third way has always been embedded in Yugoslavia and Serbia's DNA. Serbian officials still like to say that Serbia is "the East of the West" and "the West of the East." And Vucic's balancing approach has a strong precedent in the politics of long-time Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito, who was one of the founding leaders of the Non-Aligned Movement, an alliance of states that did not formally side with either the United States or the Soviet Union.
Serbia, however, is not as strong as Yugoslavia once was -- and that means Vucic's policy requires more flexibility and constant shifting. Vucic is adept at sharing the wealth among Serbia's international partners, making sure to give all the stakeholders something but, crucially, not giving everything to anyone.
In that regard, the EU is Serbia's largest investor, with significant infrastructure investments, including 96 million euros ($106 million) in 2024 for road and rail modernization, in addition to projects supporting Serbia's transition to green energy. However, Russia controls Serbia's national oil refinery, and China, through its Zijin Mining Group, owns 63 percent of RTB Bor, the country's largest mining operation.
Vucic has also opened up Serbia to the Arab world. The United Arab Emirates has invested millions of dollars in the vast Belgrade Waterfront urban development, although the project has been marred with accusations of corruption.
Not wanting to leave out the United States, in May, Serbia cut a deal with Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of former U.S. President and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, to redevelop the former Yugoslav Defense Ministry building in the center of Belgrade. The blackened shell of the ministry is iconic in the Serbian capital, destroyed in the U.S.-led NATO bombing campaign in 1999.
With the U.S. presidential election in November, many Balkan-watchers have seen the deal with Kushner as Serbia preparing for Trump's possible return to the White House. In a recent interview with the U.K.'s Financial Times, however, Vucic insisted that the deal was purely a "business venture."
As ever, Vucic is hedging his bets. "My friend [Hungarian Prime Minister] Viktor [Orban], he is 100 percent on Trump's side, " he told the Financial Times. "My friends from Brussels, they are 100 percent on Biden's side. I'm not. I'm on the Serbian side waiting for the results."
The Serbian president has taken a similar approach to Ukraine, by attempting to diversify his risks. While refusing to sign up to Western sanctions on Russia, Serbia has also provided shells to Ukraine via third parties worth 800 million euros ($888 million) since 2022, or one-third of the overall European supply.
Push And Pull
Serbia's relationship with Russia, while complex and laden with history, follows Vucic's similar push-and-pull playbook. The two predominantly Slavic nations have a historical and spiritual affinity, and Serbia is reliant on Russia diplomatically, for example, in blocking the admission to the UN of Kosovo, a former Serbian province that declared independence in 2008.
Vucic has tried to keep Russia at arm's length. Just before German Chancellor Olaf Scholz's visit to Belgrade on July 19 to sign the deal on lithium, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Aleksander Grushko visited Vucic in the Serbian capital.
One insider claimed that the meeting was "frosty," according to the the U.K.'s Financial Times. "Grushko sat down and started reading a list of 23 complaints, including the Kremlin's fury at Belgrade's decision to supply Ukraine with munitions," the source told the newspaper. "When Grushko got about halfway through the list, Vucic stood up, announced the meeting was over, and walked out."
He was similarly cold in his response to receiving the invitation to join the BRICS summit in Russia in October, saying that Serbia would have important guests during that period and that he would decide at a later date.
Speaking at the Globsec forum in Prague on August 31, Vucic rejected the idea that Belgrade was a Kremlin Trojan horse, saying that he hadn't had personal contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin for 2 and 1/2 years.
While Vucic relies heavily on Russia, said Kurt Volker, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO and envoy for Ukraine, he is "still trying to maintain some freedom of maneuver and independence."
'Stabilitocracy'
A criticism often leveled at Brussels is that the EU is prepared to put its larger interests of maintaining a geopolitical and ethnic balance in the volatile Balkans ahead of concerns about fundamental freedoms. Some critics have called this the EU's "stabilitocracy approach."
While initially criticizing Serbia's last parliamentary elections in December 2023, which were marred with numerous irregularities, those concerns were soon swept under the rug with the business deals with the EU and France.
"If Macron's getting a sale, he's not going to push very hard on other issues," Volker told RFE/RL.
For years, international watchdogs and rights groups have warned about Serbia's poor record on media freedom, the rule of law, and rampant corruption. The latest Freedom House report gave Serbia a political rights score of 18 out of a possible 40, placing it in the "partly free" category, and noting the country's downward tendency toward authoritarianism.
While the Serbian authorities paint a picture of the country as a regional economic powerhouse with one of the highest growth rates in Europe, Serbia continues to face numerous obstacles.
According to a July assessment from the U.S. International Trade Administration, "these challenges include weak rule of law; political interference in the economy; a slow-moving judicial system subject to political pressure; both real and perceived issues of corruption; an overly complex and sometimes nontransparent bureaucracy; [and] an opaque tendering process."
And, in many ways, Vucic has been a stronger leader than Milosevic, who died in 2006 in prison in The Hague, where he was being tried for war crimes. Domestically, the Serbian president has succeeded where Milosevic failed, for example by exerting control over parts of Belgrade that had been traditional strongholds for the opposition.
"Under Vucic, we've seen reinforced Serbian nationalism. We've seen efforts to undermine Montenegro. We've seen efforts to prop up [Bosnian Serb leader] Milorad Dodik and undermine Bosnia," Volker said.
Given that 70 percent of Serbia's trade is with the European Union, many in the EU wonder if Vucic is truly committed to the principles of the bloc or if Serbia's ambition to join is solely motivated by economic need.
Catch-All Policy
Vucic runs his domestic and international policy almost like a permanent election campaign: keeping his opponents -- and even partners -- on their toes, uncertain about his next move.
Calibrated contradictions abound. While it was Vucic who clinched the deal with Western countries to mine more lithium, he has also accused Western security services of masterminding popular protests against the mines and plotting a "color revolution" against him.
"Vucic has a catch-all policy," Ivan Vejvoda, a fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, told the Financial Times in June.
"One moment you have [Chinese President] Xi [Jinping] visiting. Then, days later, [Olena] Zelenska (the first lady of Ukraine) and Dmytro Kuleba (Ukraine's former foreign minister) come [to visit]. Then he goes to the Russian cultural center and gives a revisionist speech. And then, two days later, he is with the EU, talking about growth plans," Vejvoda said.
The risk Vucic runs is that, while his policy may seem pragmatic, in the end he might be perceived by Serbia's international partners as untrustworthy.
"Staying on the fence is not easy," Center for Liberal Strategies fellow Krastev said. "In a certain way, you become too vulnerable."
Volker, on the other hand, doesn't necessarily think that Vucic has an end point in mind.
"For somebody in his position, it's like riding a bicycle," he said. "You have to keep this up indefinitely, keep juggling all the balls, and then you keep going. And that's the goal in itself, just to be in power and keep going."
