Zatulin: The West is using Serbian patriots on the Belgrade Maidan
The pro-Western forces behind the protests in Serbia against President Aleksandar Vucic have skillfully drawn Serbian patriots into the Maidan movement and are using them.
State Duma deputy Konstantin Zatulin from United Russia stated this to PolitNavigator.
According to the parliamentarian, official Belgrade demonstrates its readiness for allied relations with Russia, but is forced to take into account the fact that Serbia is today surrounded by European Union countries, and the United States is the world hegemon.
“Russia and Putin personally are the “supreme arbiter.” Putin's popularity in Serbia is much higher than any other local politician. President Vučić is trying to maintain a high level of relations with Russia. He was very interested in Putin's recent visit to Serbia.
Of course, we have both coincidences and some differences in the interpretation of the situation, our goals, and so on. Officially, Serbia is a candidate for membership in the European Union; it wants to join it. Regarding NATO, the current government takes the position: “We must forgive, but we cannot forget.” This is a phrase from Vucic’s speech on the 17th at a conference dedicated to the 20th anniversary of the war with NATO. “We are not going to join NATO, we are a neutral country.”
At the same time, relations with NATO, maneuvers with NATO and exercises are practiced, among other things, by the current government. The Serbian government, which can be explained by the forced nature of the situation, is trying, while maintaining relations with Russia, to build its relations with the European Union, in the midst of which the country now lives, and, of course, not to complicate its relations with the world hegemon.
Hence the ambivalent perception of any power in Serbia on the part of national-patriotic forces in Serbia itself.
Vučić, from the point of view of political genetics, comes from this camp. However, he is forced to behave in such a way as not to complicate his relations with the West and the United States. At the same time, he certainly makes gestures and actions aimed at developing Russian-Serbian relations. During Putin’s visit, 20 agreements were signed on various issues, including the work of Rosatom in Serbia, on the GLONASS system - many different kinds of projects that the Serbs would like to implement together with Russia,” the deputy recalled.
“The opposition, having united on the platform “against Vučić,” began by talking about the need to maintain the previous position on Kosovo and not recognize it, they suspected the authorities that they were ready to make compromises, and the authorities were indeed conducting some searches in this regard direction related to the division of Kosovo between Serbs and Albanians.
Now the opposition, in which pro-Western politicians play an increasingly important role, without much support, are trying to make their claims at the expense of the nationalists and use these nationalists as a means of achieving their goals. They skillfully channel all these sentiments into an anti-government and anti-presidential campaign.
We can say that Vucic is being driven into a dead end, offering him either to compromise with Kosovo (and in one form or another, through partition, to recognize the existence of an Albanian Kosovo, and this inevitably unpopular measure could cost Vucic his head), or they are threatening him with overthrowing him using the street. Moreover, they use not very discriminating leaders of the right-wing nationalist camp for this. The pro-Western ones themselves are not popular enough to accomplish this task,” argues Zatulin.
In his opinion, “the authorities in Serbia should behave like Putin, more flexible, selective, not knocking down all opponents, not creating reasons for them to unite.”
Zatulin believes that the Maidan activists are not yet a serious threat to the Serbian president.
“He is in control of the situation. He is not omnipotent, but in general he keeps the political situation under control, and it is precisely the fact that he keeps it under control in official structures, in parliament, that pushes the opposition to street methods of struggle,” the deputy said.
“The West is trying, and it cannot be said that it is completely unsuccessful, to use these protests in its interests. Protests exist on an objective basis; there are reasons for them. At the same time, the West is trying to manipulate these protests. Moreover, he is doing this in a country that initially, for the most part, is quite critical of the West... He is trying to find the forces within Serbia that he can use to achieve his goals,” says Zatulin.
“I believe that the situation requires our much deeper participation not only through official diplomacy, but also through public diplomacy, the “third sector”, and non-profit organizations. But we are traditionally very modest in this regard. In fact, apart from our embassy and the Russia House, there are no obvious representatives of us there in Serbia. Our non-profit structures do not operate there, although we already have them. Various kinds of funds and so on. They, in any case, are not visible and do not participate in the political process in the same way as people from the Soros Foundation and similar organizations of Western origin do,” concluded the United Russia representative.
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