EU aspirant should join BRICS instead – deputy PM
Serbia should pick BRICS over Brussels, Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandar Vulin has said in an interview with Russian media.
The largest republic of the former Yugoslavia applied for EU membership in 2009 and has been a candidate since 2012, but the bloc has recently demanded recognition of the breakaway province of Kosovo as a condition for membership.
“BRICS does not ask anything of Serbia and offers more than we could want. The EU asks of us everything, and I’m no longer sure what it has to offer,” Vulin told RIA Novosti on Monday.
“We see BRICS as an opportunity and an alternative,” Vulin added. “Serbia is very closely investigating all the possibilities presented by BRICS and closer cooperation with its member states.”
According to Vulin, Serbia is expecting an official invitation to the BRICS summit, scheduled for late October in Kazan, Russia.
Despite enormous pressure from Brussels, Belgrade has not joined the US and EU embargo against Moscow, officially pledging neutrality in the Ukraine conflict and maintaining trade relations with both Russia and the West.
According to Vulin, this has put Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic at risk of “color revolution” and even assassination.
“Something happens to everyone calling for a peaceful resolution on Ukraine, they get shot at,” Vulin said, noting the attempted assassinations of Slovakian PM Robert Fico and former US President Donald Trump.
“Vucic’s life is in danger from those who want Serbia to stop being neutral, to sanction Russia, to recognize ‘independent Kosovo’ and disavow Republika Srpska in Bosnia-Herzegovina,” Vulin said. “And they’re not in the east, either.”
Serbia wants peace and disagrees with those EU and NATO members who seek to achieve the impossible objective of defeating Russia by a proxy war, said Vulin.
“Peace in Ukraine could have been reached in Istanbul,” Vulin said, referring to the Turkish-mediated talks between Moscow and Kiev. “But that didn’t happen because those making the decisions about peace in Ukraine are not from Ukraine, and wish to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian.”
Vulin has been the deputy prime minister since May. Before that, he ran the Security Intelligence Agency (BIA) from December 2022 to November 2023. According to persistent rumors, he was forced out under pressure from the US. Prior to that, he served as Serbia’s minister of defense (2017-2020) and minister of internal affairs (2020-2022).
