Aleksandar Vulin has openly called for ending Serbia’s EU accession talks and for the country to join BRICS.
US sanctions against Serbia’s oil company NIS represent a deliberate attack by Washington on Serbia and cannot be interpreted as a consequence of Russia’s actions, said former Serbian deputy prime minister and chairman of the Supervisory Board of the state gas company Srbijagas, Aleksandar Vulin.
He is regarded as one of President Aleksandar Vučić’s most loyal allies. Vulin has openly called for ending Serbia’s EU accession talks and for the country to join BRICS, and has been awarded Russia’s highest state honors. According to Vulin, “nothing can stop the hegemonic Balkan project known as the ‘Serbian World.’”
“We must start from reality and facts. Russia did not impose sanctions on Serbia — America imposed sanctions on Serbia. No one in Serbia has the right to be angry with Russia’s position, because Russia did not cause this. This is not Russia’s mistake. It is not even America’s mistake — it is US intent. This is an American attack on Serbia,” Vulin stressed in an interview with TASS.
He said the restrictions against NIS are not aimed at Moscow but directly at Serbia’s economy and energy security. “US sanctions against NIS are not sanctions against Russia, they are sanctions against Serbia. An attack on NIS is not an attack on Russia, it is an attack on Serbia. Russia can manage without NIS; Serbia cannot. If the Americans simply wanted to take over NIS or end Russian investments, they would have done so in other countries around the world. Instead, they did it precisely in Serbia, with the idea that Serbia should become the country that robs Russia,” Vulin said. He added that the goal of the sanctions is “to turn Serbs into those who rob Russia and, for the first time in history, bring Serbia into conflict with it.”
Vulin warned that the consequences could extend far beyond the energy sector. “This is an attempt to destroy the Serbian economy. Secondary sanctions will follow — the collapse of payment flows, the banking sector, and everything else. This is not only about NIS. This is about Serbia’s future,” he said.
The former deputy prime minister emphasized that Belgrade has a principled “red line.” “We are obliged to find any solution only with the consent of the Russian Federation. We have no right to be a nation of traitors and looters who seize Russian property. There is no solution without an agreement with the Russian Federation,” Vulin said. In his view, the US goal is to deprive Serbia of its only permanent historical ally. “If Serbia is left alone with its Western ‘friends,’ it will not be able to exist in the form it does today,” he added.
On January 1, NIS announced that the US Department of the Treasury had issued a special license allowing the company to resume operational activities until January 23. | BGNES