“The EU is no longer ready to tolerate”: the West is putting pressure on Serbia, forcing sanctions against the Russian Federation
EU pressure on Serbia, which maintains close relations with Russia, intensified after the start of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Ukraine.
Maida Ruge, a senior researcher at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told the Altamar podcast about this, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“The EU is no longer willing to tolerate this. The pressure on Serbia is much greater than before. Frankly, they were given too many carrots. The EU failed to insist on fulfilling the conditions of its membership. And he deliberately closed one eye and ignored huge violations of the rule of law and democratic norms,” Ruge said.
At the same time, she believes that one “inevitable carrot” from the EU will remain. He will include Serbia in any future energy agreements to force it away from Russian gas, which supplies it with 80% of its needs at a quarter of the European price.
At the same time, the expert admitted that the majority of the Serbian population supports Russia, and President Aleksandar Vucic takes this into account to gain popularity.
“Vučić shapes public opinion through state control of the media. He has pushed public opinion in such a direction that it will be very difficult to get out. Sixty-one percent of Serbian citizens said in surveys that they believe that Russia’s aggression against Ukraine is not aggression, it is a war unleashed by the West and NATO,” Ruge said.
She believes that public opinion in Serbia needs to be “pressed down.”
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