22.09.2017, Serbia.
Serbia will continue supporting Russia despite the international pressure, the Deputy Chairman of the ruling party, Serbian Progressive Party (Serbian: Српска напредна странка), Director of the Government’s Office for Kosovo and Metohija, Marko Đurić, said in an interview during Serbian delegation’s visit to Moscow, the Izvestiya newspaper reports on September 22.
“Our relations with Russia are based on deep historical, spiritual, and cultural ties. We are proud of our brotherhood with the Russian people, and we never betray our friendship under pressure from abroad. Serbia is one of the few European states that did not join the anti-Russian sanctions, and it never will,” Đurić said when he was asked whether Serbia could join the sanctions under pressure from the EU. “We cannot tolerate any decisions to be made for us by someone else,” the Deputy Chairman of the ruling party added.
Đurić also referred to the common history of the Serbian and Russian peoples’ struggle against Nazism. “We remember the heroic deeds of our ancestors who fought together to liberate our land and all Europe. We oppose any attempts to revise the history, and we will further celebrate significant dates together with Russia,” the politician stressed.
Serbia became an EU candidate country in 2012. A pre-condition for joining the EU was to resolve the disagreement with the partially recognized republic of Kosovo. The same year, in its attempts to achieve a resolution, Belgrade signed agreements of regional co-operation and joint control at the border checkpoints with Pristina. The sitting president of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, called in July 2017 to start “an internal dialogue on Kosovo”, which met a mixed reaction in the Serbian society.
Source: Rossa Primavera News Agency
