Brnabic: Serbia maintaining principled position on Russia sanctions

BELGRADE - Serbian PM Ana Brnabic said late on Sunday that, unlike some other countries, Serbia was maintaining a principled position on the issue of imposing sanctions on Russia.

"As far as sanctions are concerned, Serbia is maintaining a principled position on the sanctions. Every time, we express that position clearly at every meeting but, as they say in international politics, these are strange things - when some beat their chest about morality and imposing sanctions on Russia over the aggression on Ukraine, and then you see that Belgium has managed not to impose sanctions on Russia regarding imports of Russian diamonds," Brnabic said on a Pink TV talk show.

"In the entire narrative about morale, diamonds have turned out to be more important than the aggression or the territorial integrity of an internationally recognised state, which is being disputed in our case," Brnabic added.

"When some ambassadors say a standard does not apply to every country, it seems that no standard applies to our country. All of their standards are no longer valid when it comes to Serbia. Our job is to fight," Brnabic said.

She said a Financial Times analysis published last month had shown that the EU's imports of Russian LNG in the first ten months of 2022 had been up by 42 pct y-o-y, with France, Belgium and the Netherlands purchasing nearly all of the supplies.

She said sanctions on Russian crude oil were another example as some countries had been exempted from imposing them. "The Western Balkans has not - I guess we are some kind of an economic power capable of handling that - but some other countries, like Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria and even Croatia, have," she said.

"Croatia, which is lecturing us and saying we cannot sit on two chairs, seems to be allowed to sit on two chairs," Brnabic said.