Who are the high-ranking 'Russian people' in Serbia?

 

The former head of the Serbian intelligence service, Aleksandar Vulin, was honored by Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Russian Federal Security Service.

 

Vulin has never hidden his good ties with Russia, as well as some ministers and officials in Serbia who criticize the West and unequivocally advocate cooperation with Russia without disputing the invasion of Ukraine.

 

Nenad Popović, a former minister in the Government of Serbia and a long-time member of the Parliament, as well as a socialist and long-time director of the state company "Srbijagas" Dušan Bajatović, were also decorated with the Russian Order.

 

The Minister of Health, Danica Grujičić, also justified the Russian invasion before taking office.

 

Naim Leo Beširi from the Belgrade Institute for European Affairs states that "Russian people" in power actually maintain the true orientation of the ruling coalition in Serbia led by Aleksandar Vučić.

 

Serbia is one of the few candidate countries for EU membership that has not imposed sanctions on Russia and cooperates with Russia despite calls from the European Union to harmonize its foreign policy with the EU, whose membership it aspires to.

 

Aleksandar Vulin: Orders from Russia, accusations of corruption from the USA

The former director of the Security and Information Agency (BIA) of Serbia, Aleksandar Vulin, received two orders from the highest state structures in Russia in January.

 

The Movement of Socialists, of which Vulin is the founder, informed the public about this.

 

Vulin received the Order of Friendship from Putin, and from the Federal Security Service of Russia (FSB), the order for "exceptional professionalism and contribution to cooperation between the Serbian and Russian services".

He received the order from Putin, according to his party, for "a great personal contribution to the development and improvement of cooperation between the Security and Information Agency of Serbia and the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) of Russia in the area of ensuring state security and protecting the national interests of Serbia and Russia."

 

Naim Leo Beshiri from the Institute of European Affairs for RSE assesses that it is very controversial to receive an order from its security service in the middle of the war that Russia is waging in Ukraine.

 

He considers the order "a reward for obedience".

 

"The rumors that Vulin provided information about Russian dissidents in Serbia directly to Moscow were never fully investigated," says Beshiri.

 

Russian opposition member Vladimir Kara-Murza accused Aleksandr Vulin, then head of the BIA, of taking to Moscow recordings of a meeting of Russian opposition members in Belgrade, after which one of them was arrested in Russia.

 

Vulin denied those claims and announced a lawsuit against Kara-Murza, but it is not known whether legal proceedings have been initiated.

 

In April, Kara-Murza was sentenced to 25 years in prison in Russia for "high treason", spreading "false information" about the Russian military and illegally working for an "undesirable" organization.

 

Vulin also traveled to Moscow in December 2021, where he met with the Secretary of the Security Council of Russia Nikolai Patrushev and discussed, among other things, "color revolutions", that is, the alleged plans of the "power centers" to collapse the statehood and sovereignty of countries through protests.

 

In July 2023, the United States placed Vulin on its sanctions list for alleged corruption and involvement in drug trafficking, as well as ties to Russia.

 

On November 3, 2023, he resigned from the position of head of the intelligence agency, as he said, because he has no right "to sacrifice Serbia" for the sake of remaining in office.

 

Vulin is a long-term coalition partner of Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić, and in the previous decade he held several positions - from the director of the Government Office for Kosovo, the Ministry of Labour, through the defense and internal affairs departments he led, to the position of the first man of the Serbian secret service.

 

While he held these positions, he repeatedly expressed anti-Western views and spoke in favor of cooperation with Russia.

 

In January, according to the website of the Movement of Socialists, he stated, among other things, that the West will not crush Vučić and that "the resistance of the Serbian people to Western pressure is measured by the introduction or non-introduction of sanctions against Russia."

 

RFE did not receive Vulin's response to questions about cooperation with Russian security services by the time this article was finished.

Nenad Popović: The network of companies in Russia and the 'black list' of the USA

A network of companies registered in Russia engaged in various activities is associated with the name of Nenad Popović, a member of the Serbian Parliament and former Minister for Innovation and Technological Development.

 

As RSE wrote in November 2023, according to data from the Spark international database of business registers, at least 14 companies are associated with his name.

 

According to the Agency for the Prevention of Corruption in Serbia, Popović declared his ownership in 19 companies in the last report submitted to this institution. Some of these companies are registered abroad - some in Russia, and some in Cyprus.

 

Also, Popović is connected with the establishment of the "Keying Point" - "space for innovations" behind which stands the state-owned company of the same name, which was jointly founded by Serbia and Russia. Namely, during the establishment of that company in 2022, the state of Serbia was represented by Popović, as the then Minister for Innovation and Technological Development.

 

Popović is the leader of the Serbian People's Party, a long-time coalition partner of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party.

 

Since November 2023, Popović is under the sanctions of the United States of America due to his connections with sanctioned Russian companies.

 

He did not publicly announce the sanctions.

 

Popović is also a recipient of orders from the Russian Federation, according to the website of his Serbian People's Party.

 

The President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, reportedly awarded him the Order of Friendship in 2010 for his special contribution to the development and strengthening of economic and social ties between Serbia and Russia.

 

As stated, he is also the recipient of several awards given by the Russian Orthodox Church, among other things, for his contribution to the rapprochement of Orthodox peoples.

 

Popović spoke in support of the cooperation between Russia and Serbia on several occasions, and during the corona virus pandemic he advertised mainly in the version with the delivery and production of the Russian vaccine against COVID-19 "Spitnjik V" in Serbia.

 

In 2022, Popović took part in a march to mark the Victory Day over Fascism and Nazism in Belgrade, and at the head of that procession was a prominent cardboard figure of the President of Russia Vladimir Putin, as well as the large Latin letter "Z", a symbol of support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine .

 

Popović then declared that "Serbia and Russia have always been on the right side of history."

 

RSE did not answer questions about cooperation with Russia.

 

Dušan Bajatović: Support for the invasion in Ukraine in the pre-election campaign

Dušan Bajatović, an official of the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS), openly supported Russia's invasion of Ukraine during the election campaign in Serbia.

 

By the way, Bajatović has been at the head of "Srbijagas", a state-owned energy company that depends on Russia for its business, from where it imports gas.

 

In December 2023, Bajatović participated in a pre-election rally in the Vojvodina town of Pancevo in a red sweatshirt with the capital letter "Z".

 

In the same month, Bajatović was awarded the Order of the Russian Federation for his contribution to the development and strengthening of international relations.

 

At the time, he wrote in a post on the X social network that it was a recognition for all those working to strengthen the close ties between Serbia and Russia.

 

"We give our land, we give our soul, we sell our brothers, for the sake of some kind of entry into the European Union, which no one has ever told us when it will happen or if it will happen," Bajatović said in a statement in December, as stated in the SPS announcement. .

 

The SPS, which has been in power with the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) for more than a decade, is considered pro-Russian.

 

In 2022, Bajatovic also organized a fundraiser with the Russian embassy for children in the Donbass, a separatist region of eastern Ukraine whose independence was recognized by the Russian president ahead of the invasion of that country.

 

Dušan Bajatović is considered one of the highest-paid officials in Serbia, and according to the latest report of the Agency for the Prevention of Corruption, his monthly income exceeds 35,000 euros.

 

Bajatović did not answer RSE's questions about cooperation with Russia and support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

 

Danica Grujičić: Justification of the Russian invasion and claims about the consequences of the NATO bombing

Pro-Russian voices and justification of the invasion of Ukraine could also be heard from the former director of the Institute of Oncology in Belgrade, Danica Grujičić, who will be the Minister of Health of Serbia from 2022.

 

In March 2022, one month after the invasion of Ukraine, Grujicic told the Russian Sputnik that she does not perceive the Russian invasion as Russia's aggression against Ukraine. but as a "tremendous accident".

 

"The emergence of Nazism has been evident in Ukraine since 2014 with the tacit support of the West for the formation of Nazi battalions and their arming," she said.

 

On several occasions, Grujičić made public the thesis that the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 led to an increased number of people suffering from malignant diseases, a thesis for which there is no official confirmation.

 

This thesis was also presented by the former Russian ambassador to Serbia, Aleksandar Bocan Harchenko.

 

"Russia is also ready to work on examining the consequences of NATO bombing, which are more than obvious when it comes to oncology patients," Kharchenko said in 2019.

 

The report of the United Nations Environment Program on the impact of depleted uranium during the NATO intervention in Serbia and Montenegro "did not reveal significant and widespread contamination".

 

Naim Leo Beširi from the Institute for European Affairs believes that Grujičić "clearly leads Russian propaganda in Serbia".

 

"It fuels false information about the increase in the number of oncology patients in Serbia due to depleted uranium during the NATO bombing, this is a sentence that comes from Moscow," says Beshiri.

 

Grujičić was first on the list of the ruling coalition for the parliamentary elections "Aleksandar Vučić - Together we can do everything" in 2022.

 

RSE did not receive an answer to the questions regarding Grujicic's cooperation with Russia.

 

What are the consequences?

 

Naim Leo Beširi from the Belgrade Institute for European Affairs assessed that after 12 years of government, Serbia "is not significantly closer to the European Union".

 

Beshiri says that "Russian influence" is part of that stagnation of Serbia because "there is Moscow's commitment to stop the modernization of Serbia, to block Serbia's orientation towards the West, even though its economy is there".

 

Several Western officials warned at the beginning of 2024 about the malignant influence of Russia in the Balkans.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Slovenia, Tanja Fajon, said in an interview with CNN on January 10 that she is concerned about Russian influence and interference in Serbia and the Republika Srpska entity in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

 

British Foreign Minister David Cameron said in January that Russia aims to destabilize the Western Balkans region.

 

On November 8, 2023, the European Commission's progress report was delivered to Serbia, warning that Serbia did not fulfill the request to impose sanctions on Russia.

 

This report from Brussels notes, among other things, bad grades in key chapters 23 and 24 on the rule of law.