‘Putin Is Actually Afraid’ – Serbia Is Walking a Tightrope When It Comes to the War in Ukraine

At “SerbFest” in Clearwater, Florida, over the weekend, none of the ethnic Serb-Americans on hand felt much like discussing the war in Ukraine.

“We don’t really like talking politics,” said a Serbia-born woman in her 30s, as she and her family stood by a food stand serving cevapi sausages and burek cheese pies, when asked about their position.

“It’s best if we just end this thing,” noted a man with a trimmed grey beard and brown leather jacket, sipping a rakija fruit brandy and watching the folk-dancing children on stage. “We’ve had our own experience with war in our country. The sooner this is over, the better.”

In fact, the only whiff of politics anywhere at the Serb-American cultural festival was inside the illuminated St. George Serbian Orthodox Church, where a collection box met guests with the sign: “Aid for Kosovo.”

Serb-Americans and Serbians in general have shied from the spotlight when it comes to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has pitted their firmly rooted past against their leaders’ envisioned future.

On one hand, they appear unwilling to break their historic ties with Moscow, which has backed them through several wars of their own. On the other, the country has been a candidate for EU membership since 2012. The Russian invasion has rendered that position precarious, as Brussels has had precious little patience for member states, such as Hungary, who have voiced their opposition to sending military aid for Ukraine’s defense.

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The Ukrainian military regularly reports that Russian forces are resorting to ‘meat assaults,’ sending wounded or poorly trained fighters into battle as cannon fodder.

But according to a poll by Demostat in June 2023, only about a third of Serbians still want to join the bloc, the lowest approval rating in a region that includes EU candidates Bosnia, Montenegro and North Macedonia.  

Serbia has refused to join European sanctions on Russia.

Serbian leadership defiantly speaks with Putin in Kazan

The specter of EU accession still looms large in Belgrade, however. Despite his self-admittedly good relations with Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić was cautious about the optics of his country’s representation at the BRICS summit in Kazan, Russian Federation, last month. He declined the invitation to be a visible part of Putin’s circle of allies and appeasers, and instead, at the eleventh hour, sent Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandar Vulin in his place.

On Oct. 23, EU spokesman Peter Stano issued a warning that all EU candidate countries “are expected to refrain from contacts with Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin.”

Vulin met with Putin in Kazan nonetheless.

Last week, Vučić made the surprise announcement that he would meet with Putin personally in the spring for a World War II commemorative event.

“If the end of the world doesn’t happen, though I’m no longer sure, but I hope it won’t, it would be a great honor for me to be at Red Square for the 80th anniversary of of liberation from Fascism,” Vučić said last Tuesday.

Another pro-Kremlin figure in Europe, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, said he would also attend the May 9 event.

Vučić last week warned that Putin is “actually afraid” and that his threats to use weapons on Western Europe are for real.

“When you have ten steps to complete disaster, we have crossed the ninth,” the Serbian president said. “I will tell you openly what I think. I think that no one will hesitate to use all the weapons they have… In the West, they will say that Putin is playing games and threatening with this, but he is actually afraid, and I will tell you that few people know President Putin like I do,” he said in an address to the public.

“If the security of Moscow and its forces are threatened... he will not hesitate for a moment,” Vučić concluded.

Kosovo on their mind

Nearing the end of the cultural festival in Florida, a group of three women of disparate ages entered the Serbian Orthodox church, walked past the man on the right selling votive candles, and veered left, appearing to drop a folded bank note in the slot marked “Aid for Kosovo.”

In February of 2008, nine years after NATO’s intervention on its behalf, Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia. Today, despite the constant presence of American troops there, Northern Kosovo has struggled to quiet the resistance of the large Serb population there.

In an interview over the weekend with TV Hram, the media outlet of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Antony of Volokolamsk, who represents the Russian Orthodox Church in Western Europe, compared the Serbs’ fight in Kosovo with the war in Ukraine.

“For the Serbian people, Kosovo is the cradle of their Orthodoxy,” the patriarch said. “Similarly, for us [Russians], Kyiv is where we received our faith.”

Serb strongman Slobodan Milošević made a rally cry for Serbian nationalists in 1989 in Kosovo. Slovenia and Croatia declared independence from Serbian-dominated Yugoslavia in 1991. Fighting began when Milošević sent troops into Croatia to ostensibly protect Serb populations there.

In the course of the wars a series of ethnic-cleansing campaigns followed: first against Croatians in Vukovar, later against Bosnian Muslims; then in 1995 with Croatians expelling Serbs from Krajina; and finally in 1999 against ethnic Albanians who constituted the majority in Kosovo, followed by Serbs being chased out of parts of Kosovo.

Ultimately Milošević’s ethnic-cleansing campaigns were stopped by NATO intervention – in 1995 in Bosnia and in 1999 over Kosovo. He was deposed by his own people in the 2000 Bulldozer Revolution. Milošević died in 2006 while awaiting trial for genocide at the International Criminal Tribunal in the Hague, the Netherlands.

According to the Orthodox Times, “the Metropolitan spoke of the difficult situation faced by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC)… claiming it is undergoing persecution that is being overlooked by the global community.”

“We appeal to the international community to take notice of what is happening in Ukraine,” Metropolitan Antony said.

Ukrainian authorities, for their part, insist that the UOC – which is still subordinate to the Moscow Patriarchate – is deeply infiltrated by pro-Russian elements and represents a fifth column within Ukraine.

There have been efforts by the Kyiv government to mitigate the UOC’s influence by arresting clerics who actively engage in pro-Russian propaganda. Meanwhile, the pro-Kyiv Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) – to which the majority of Ukrainian Orthodox believers belong, and which has been in communion with and subordinate to the Patriarchate of Constantinople since 2019 – has been encouraging defections to its parishes.

Indeed, the only religious persecution occurring in Ukraine, Kyiv emphasizes, is the Russian persecution of Catholics and Evangelical Protestants on Ukrainian territory occupied by Russian troops.