By Ivana Stradner, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic—whose country is one of Russia’s closest allies in Europe—recently made a surprisingly strong statement in support of Ukraine. “We said from the beginning that we cannot support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,” he said, adding that “for us, Crimea is Ukraine, Donbas is Ukraine—it will remain so.” Many experts in the West quickly concluded that Serbia had seen the writing on the wall and was cutting ties with Russia amid the latter’s failing war in Ukraine and increasingly isolated pariah status. Nobody likes a loser.
This Western hope, however, couldn’t be more misguided. Vucic’s statement is merely a continuation of Belgrade’s balancing strategy between Russia and the West. To pursue relations with each, it adjusts its relationships to suit its interests. In this case, Vucic’s apparent pivot was all about Kosovo’s right to independence, which Belgrade firmly rejects. At the same time, however, the fact remains that an isolated and weakened Russia losing in Ukraine will be a bad ally for Serbia. The West would do well to remind Serbs of this fundamental geopolitical shift.
The logic behind Vucic’s statement is simple: In Serbia’s view, its territorial integrity was illegally violated by Kosovo’s unilateral 2008 declaration of independence, which is recognized by roughly half of the world’s countries. By that logic, defending Ukraine’s right to control all of its territory is another way of saying that Serbia should do the same. For Vucic, Crimea, Donbas, and Kosovo are parallel cases of dismemberment.