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Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić intends to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in October, on the sidelines of the "Belt and Road" forum, which will be held in China, Serbian media Demostat writes.
The leaders of Serbia and Russia have already publicly confirmed their attendance at the Chinese summit, but it remains an open question whether they will meet, which would be their first face-to-face meeting since the start of the war in Ukraine.
Vucic has recently announced that during the summit he will meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping, saying that he is a great friend of Serbia and that he is looking forward to the meeting.
"By the end of the year I expect serious and important discussions with our very, very important partners. In October I will make an important visit to China. The big question is what will happen there, because Putin is also expected to arrive," said Vucic in August.
But does Vucic need a meeting with Putin at this moment and will it bring him more harm or benefit?
Serbia will most likely go to the polls again in December, so the meeting with Putin would undoubtedly bring Vucic extra points with pro-Russian voters, writes Demostat.
It would not be the first time that Vucic during the pre-election campaign played the card of the Russian president, whose popularity in Serbia is great, and it would not be the first time that he met with him immediately before the elections.
Putin is still the most popular foreign politician in Serbia, and last year his popularity was only one percentage point lower than Vucic's, the Demostat study showed.
However, a meeting with Putin in the middle of the war in Ukraine and immediately after the recent incidents in northern Kosovo would send another signal that would not be well received in the West.
After the armed conflict between Serbs and Albanians in Banjska, the first open conflict after the pogrom of 2004 that resulted in human casualties on both sides, there are still many open questions and part of the opinion speculates that the Russian factor was also involved in the action.
Several member states of the European Union have already requested the imposition of measures against Serbia if the country's connection with the attack in Banjska is proven, which is additional pressure.
Moreover, in mid-August, the issue that has been floating in the air since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, and it concerns the pressure on Serbia to harmonize with the foreign policy of the European Union, namely the West, and the imposition of sanctions . about Russia due to its aggression against Ukraine, was updated again.
Accordingly, after certain world media, including CNN, FAZ, Spiegel, published texts in August in which they criticized Vucic's moves and practically assessed that the approach that implies strategic patience towards Serbia is wrong, Vucic said that he expects the greatest pressure from the international community for us. place to impose sanctions on Russia.
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