 | | Medvedev, Tadić in Belgrade on Oct. 20 (Tanjug) |
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev arrived in Serbia on Oct. 20 for an eight-hour visit that coincides with the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Belgrade from Nazi Germany in the Second World War. During his visit, Medvedev will hold a meeting with Serbian President Boris Tadić, speak before the Serbian parliament and receive the Serbian Orthodox Church’s highest distinction: the Order of St. Sava of the First Degree.
Medvedev’s visit to Belgrade reaffirms strong relations between Russia and Serbia and illustrates that despite Serbia being led by an officially pro-EU government, Moscow may be on the best terms with Belgrade in decades.
Serbia and Russia are often cited as “traditional” allies, due to strong cultural and religious links between the two Slav and Orthodox countries. However, Serbia has at various times in its history allied against Russia, most notably during the entirety of the Cold War under Yugoslav leader Marshal Josip Broz Tito. Therefore, there is nothing “traditional” about the alliance; and like all alliances, it is most concrete when based on firm geopolitical foundations.
Serbia has traditionally been the most powerful West Balkan state due to the combination of population and its central location: It holds command of the Danube and Morava transportation corridors. Russia, like other European powers, has sought to curb Serbian power when Belgrade’s expansionism crosses its interests in the Balkans. However, Russian assets in the Balkans through the last two decades have been at their lowest point due to the end of the Cold War – and it is normally the great power upset with status quo in the Balkans that seeks to light the match to ignite the Balkan powder keg.
Today, the status quo in the Balkans is that the West has won the various 1990s wars of post-Cold War transition and that, other than Serbia, most of the region is under the West’s overt control or rolled into its alliances. Serbia thought it too would be welcomed by the West following its pro-democracy revolution in 2000, expecting that it would be rewarded for the painful self-initiated regime change against strongman Slobodan Milošević. Nine years later, this has not happened. From the perspective of various Serbian political actors – including privately many officially pro-EU ones – nine years of democratic changes have brought Serbia no closer to the European Union than it was under Milošević.
Furthermore, despite Belgrade’s democratic changes, the European Union (most of it anyway) and the United States continued to support Kosovo’s February 2008 unilateral declaration of independence. This was unacceptable to Serbia due to the fact that it lost sovereignty over 15 percent of its territory, and unacceptable to Russia because it illustrated the West’s complete disregard for Moscow’s concerns on European post-Cold War security arrangements. It is in this confluence of interests that officially pro-EU Belgrade and Moscow have found common grounds for what appears to be a budding relationship.
Meanwhile, Russian business interests in Serbia are growing and are heavily influential across the political spectrum of both nationalist and pro-Western political parties in Serbia. In Belgrade, Medvedev is accompanied by a delegation of about 100 government and business officials that will finalize a Russian loan of 1 billion euro ($1.5 billion) to the Serbian government. Potential side deals that will come out of the visit are plans for a Russian purchase of troubled Serbian airline JAT, Russian investment in Serbian infrastructure including construction of a natural gas storage facility and Belgrade’s metro system, and deals for Serbian construction firms to do work for the 2014 Sochi Olympics. It is not lost on the Serbian public and politicians in Belgrade that while U.S. Vice President Joe Biden came to Belgrade bearing promises, Medvedev comes bearing very substantial gifts.
Medvedev’s visit to Belgrade therefore makes official what has become obvious over the past six months: that Serbia and Russia are coming closer on more than just the Kosovo issue. Belgrade is essentially beginning to doubt that EU integration will ever come to pass for Serbia. The mood in Belgrade is that Brussels does not want further enlargement in the Western Balkans, particularly in Serbia, and that demands placed on Serbia to turn over war criminals are being used as an excuse to stall the process – an assessment that is not far off the mark. Belgrade is therefore hedging, trying to show the European Union that it has other options (and perhaps spur it into action on enlargement) while demonstrating to its electorate that it has foreign policy successes on non-EU fronts, such as the recent much-publicized visit by Tadić to China.
As Belgrade probably hoped, the European Commission countered the Russian loan almost immediately by offering its own 200 million euro ($300 million) loan. From Belgrade’s perspective, playing the West and Russia off one another would be a lucrative strategy after all, Yugoslavia benefited greatly from such a strategy for years during the Cold War. However, it is not clear that Europe and the West in general will bite on this strategy, particularly because Serbia today has much different geopolitical relevance than Yugoslavia had during the Cold War.
From Brussels’ perspective, Serbia is surrounded by NATO member countries and isolated from Russia. Europe and the United States believe they have the luxury of letting Serbia sit on the outside looking in for essentially as long as they want. But in the meantime, Russia will play on Serbia’s indignation over being left outside of EU integration processes and will increase its influence in the Balkans, trying to upset the West’s stranglehold in the region. The real question is to what ends Russia will use its budding alliance with Serbia, particularly as the game between Moscow and Washington heats up over Central Europe and Iran.
This report originally appeared on the STRATFOR website
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