Vucic: I am proud to sit only on "Serbian chair"

BELGRADE - Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic says he is very proud to be sitting only on a "Serbian chair" and that Serbia is conducting an independent policy, with full-fledged EU membership as a strategic goal.

"We will do all the necessary reforms. We will speed up all the processes and we will do our best to finish that by the end of 2026. It does not mean that we will be a part of the EU in 2027 or 2028. It is up to the EU countries," Vucic said on BBC Hardtalk.

"Will we say the worst about our traditional friends or partners from the East? No, we are not going to do it," Vucic said, noting that Serbia had "a good relationship with China today."

He added that he focused on economic reforms and the future, and that he wanted a normal relationship with "everybody in the region."

Asked about Serbia's relationship with Russia and what host Stephen Sackur referred to as "deepened" energy ties with Moscow, Vucic responded that the volume of Serbia's trade with Russia had halved.

"You are speaking about energy reliance, and we are trying and doing our best to diversify it. That is why we built that interconnector with Bulgaria. That is why we not only started negotiating, but buying gas from Azerbaijan as well. That is what I discussed recently with (Azerbaijani President) Ilham Aliyev as well, but we still get a lot of gas quantities from Russia."

Responding to a comment about Belgrade's refusal to impose sanctions on Russia, Vucic said Serbia made its decisions on its own.

"I have only one chair, as you can see. No two chairs. And our chair means that we make our decisions by ourselves. It means that we supported Ukraine when it comes to humanitarian aid, financial aid, more than all others in the Western Balkans. There is no contraction at all, but there is a lot of contradiction in the behaviour of all the others. But we are very much principled and morally principled," he said.

Vucic also said it was not him who had spoken with Russian President Vladimir Putin dozens of times in the past two and a half years.

He added that, during that period, he had spoken to Putin once, when the Russian president had congratulated him by phone on the 80th anniversary of the WWII liberation of Belgrade.

"But EU leaders were going to Moscow, seeing President Putin and discussing all the issues, and are still buying oil and gas from Putin and trying to depict Serbia as the only culprit. We are an easy target," Vucic noted.