Signal to NATO “partners”: Serbia will expand work with the CSTO
Located in the center of Europe and surrounded by NATO countries, Serbia, through the mouth of its defense minister, was not afraid to declare that it wants to cooperate with the Collective Security Treaty Organization, which will certainly infuriate the “hawks” from among the “respected Western partners”.
Today, the head of the Russian Ministry of Defense Sergei Shoigu was on a visit to Serbia, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“The good personal relations between the presidents and supreme commanders of the armed forces of our countries, Vladimir Putin and Aleksandar Vucic, contributed to cooperation between Russia and Serbia at the highest historical level,” Serbian Defense Minister Aleksandar Vulin addressed his guest with these words. “I would like to note that President Vucic was the only statesman in Europe who said that his country would never impose sanctions against Russia.”
Vulin also thanked Russia for being principled on the Kosovo issue, blocking the UN resolution on Srebrenica, with the help of which the West tried to label the Serbs as a “genocidal people”, rearmament and re-equipment of the Serbian army (expressing the hope that it will continue in the future), for inviting the Serbian military personnel to take part in the Moscow parade on May 9.
“In accordance with the policy of military neutrality, Serbia will strive to develop and further improve cooperation with the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), as well as bilateral partnerships with its member states,” Vulin emphasized.
The Serbian Defense Minister noted that “only those who have not met our friend and brother General Shoigu can claim that in politics there are only interests, and there is no place for love.”
In turn, Sergei Shoigu noted that Serbia supports Russia in its efforts to prevent attempts to falsify history and rehabilitate fascism. The Russian guest also recalled that Serbia and Russia repeatedly fought together against common enemies in the 19th and 20th centuries. And he invited his Serbian colleague to take part in a meeting of heads of defense departments as part of the SCO summit.
The schedule of the visit of the Minister of Defense of Serbia was busy: he met with the country's President Aleksandar Vucic, visited the exhibition “Defense 78” in the Belgrade Museum, dedicated to the 78 days of NATO aggression against Yugoslavia.
“NATO aggression against Yugoslavia claimed the lives of many innocent people - women, old people, children,” Sergei Shoigu wrote in the exhibition’s guest book. “But thanks to courage and fortitude, the Serbian people were not broken. We must not forget about this tragedy and do everything possible to prevent it from happening again.”
The defense ministers of Russia and Serbia also visited the memorial cemetery, where the remains of 818 soldiers of the Red Army and 1395 soldiers of the National Liberation Army of Yugoslavia, who liberated Belgrade in 1944, are buried. Shoigu brought there a capsule with Russian soil, which will be installed in the Belgrade Eternal Flame memorial complex, built according to the project of Academician of the Russian Academy of Arts Andrei Tyrtyshnikov, dedicated to the Serbian and Russian victims of World War II. It is expected that the eternal flame will be lit in March of this year.
In addition, Sergei Shoigu received an honorary doctorate from the Defense University in Belgrade “for his invaluable contribution to the development of military education and training.” The rector of the university, Goran Radovanovic, thanked the Russian minister for his assistance in training the Serbian military, and especially for the free training of MIG-29 pilots.
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