Eurasia Press & News
For more than a year, Serbia has been calculating the (non)introduction of sanctions against Russia, which has recently been shown to be a maneuver that the current government is seriously reconsidering, writes Oslobođenje .
It also seems that public opinion is slowly giving way to the “Russophile euphoria”, and that the image of the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, is slowly being demystified.
At the same time, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the story of whether we are on the side of the civilized world or whether we are still neutral, as the President of the RS Milorad Dodik insists, has become topical again.
A political decision
The last testimony was offered by the intellectuals of Serbia, who recently signed a petition to revoke the title of honorary doctorate from the same Putin because, as they explained, “the reasons for which he received this recognition no longer exist.”
This is especially interesting knowing that last year also a group of academics put together a completely different initiative calling on the “brains” of Serbia to join the support for not imposing sanctions on Russia.
In the meantime, the rhetoric of the authorities has changed a lot, so now they talk more openly about the possibility of introducing sanctions, and the contacts of Serbian statesmen have been directed at colleagues from Washington and Brussels for months.
Incomparably more often than with diplomats from the Kremlin.
Regarding the latest initiative to revoke the doctor’s degree of the University of Belgrade, the professors, signatories of this request, explain: “Vladimir Putin as president stands at the head of the Russian Federation, which carried out a military intervention in Ukraine, and which the United Nations and the Republic of Serbia decisively and publicly condemned. Bearing in mind the unacceptable human, political and moral aspects of the aggression against Ukraine, the terrifying number of civilian and military victims and millions of displaced persons, the wanton destruction of a sovereign country, in the stated circumstances ‘exceptional contribution of national importance’ as the reason for awarding an honorary doctorate from the University of Belgrade to Vladimir Putin no longer exists and is in direct contradiction to the explanation by which this person was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Belgrade. especially bearing in mind that the awarding of an honorary doctorate from the University of Belgrade. honorary doctorate did not have any scientific, but purely political motivation”, states the initiative signed by professors Dušan Teodorović, Nikola Samardžić, Stevan Lilić, Dubravka Stojanović, Ivan Videnović, Vesna Rakić Vodinelić, Vladimir Vodinelić, Rade Veljanovski and Dragor Hiber.
The professors remind that until now, Serbia “has repeatedly supported the resolutions of the General Assembly as the highest body of this organization, which condemn Russia’s military intervention against sovereign Ukraine, which is one of the original founding states of the United Nations. in San Francisco in 1945 (as opposed to the Russian Federation which is not)”.
By the way, Putin was never awarded a doctorate, and Professor Branko Kovačević, who was rector of the University of Belgrade at the time when Putin, then the Prime Minister of Russia, was awarded an honorary doctorate, believes that “it would be inappropriate to realize it now”.
“They offered me to go to Moscow and take him to him, but I said that if he cares, he must come to the University, because it is according to the Statute and applies to everyone. The Russian patriarch Kirill Franco Fratini also came… There was also a proposal to hand over the diploma to Putin outside the premises of the University, which I also refused,” Professor Kovačević told Danas and added that an honorary doctorate is not awarded to someone who does not agree to receive it. and that the regulations do not provide for it to be confiscated.
Therefore, the matter is of a purely symbolic nature and we should not expect that Putin will soon appear in Serbia to adorn himself with the awarded title.
The debate in Bosnia and Herzegovina was initiated by a vote in the UN General Assembly, and our country supported the resolution calling on Russia to withdraw its forces from Ukraine. The resolution was adopted with 141 votes “for”, seven “against” and 32 abstentions.
The resolution was supported by the representative of Bosnia and Herzegovina at the UN, Sven Alkalaj, as well as the ambassadors of all the countries of the region, including Serbia.
However, for Dodik, this means that the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina has been violated, which is not at all surprising, given that he was left alone in the Balkans in his efforts to win over the Russian president, whom he presented with the Order of St.
RS on a necklace for “patriotic concern” on the occasion of the unconstitutional Day of Republika Srpska and love for the RS”, presented as a benefactor.
On the other hand, few people remember when the President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, told us about some “long, friendly phone conversations with Putin”, which he had been informing us about for almost a month.
Moreover, after a year of persistently refusing to impose sanctions on Russia, he says in early February that Serbia may have to do so.
- I’m not enthusiastic about it, but I don’t know how long we will last if we don’t introduce sanctions. We are paying the price for not introducing them, but that is a question of the political commitment of our leadership, said Vučić in the Serbian Parliament, and the Kremlin did not miss it.
Namely, the next day the spokesman Dmitry Peskov reacts, saying that “the Kremlin understands that the leadership of Serbia is under unprecedented pressure from the West and appreciates the position of President Aleksandar Vučić, hoping to improve relations between the two countries.”
Just a few days later, Vučić even more directly admits the possibility of joining restrictive measures against Russia, saying that it is “not even a question of the month”.
Recently, by the way, several right-wingers were arrested, who at a meeting on February 15 demanded that Serbia end the dialogue with Kosovo, trying to enter the Presidency. The rally was organized by the right-wing organization People’s Patrol, which publicly talks about its ties to the Russian Wagner paramilitary formations.
The head of Wagner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said a few days ago that there are currently no Serbian citizens among the fighters of that private military company in Ukraine, and that the last one left the group two months ago.
- Vučić goes wild for no reason. There are no Serbs in Wagner, Prigozhin said.
However, it was not for nothing that Vučić threatened the warriors with arrest upon their return to Serbia, because BiH. At the beginning of this year, the security services banned the entry into Bosnia and Herzegovina of six Serbian citizens who are associated with the Wagner paramilitary formation.
It used to be
The imprisonment of Russophiles and especially their intolerance towards the president were interpreted as another signal that Vučić is preparing public opinion for a change of course towards Russia’s policy.
Because, a year ago, for example, it was hard to even imagine that any Russophile was against the president’s policy towards Moscow, which was firmly “against sanctions”.
After all, let’s recall that at this time last year, not long after the outbreak of the conflict, while Serbia was procrastinating to make a statement about everything that was happening, the Institute for Political Networking launched a petition against the introduction of sanctions against the Russian Federation.
The petition was then signed by dozens of politicians and intellectuals, with the explanation that Russia is “the most important geopolitical, political, security and economic ally of Serbia and the Serbian people”.
