Lavrov: Russia confirmed support for Serbia on Kosovo-Metohija issue

MOSCOW - After a meeting with Serbian FM Marko Djuric, Russian FM Sergey Lavrov said Russia had confirmed its readiness to support the safeguarding of Serbia's legitimate interests regarding the Kosovo-Metohija issue.

"We will advocate the Kosovo-Metohija topic being a priority in the Security Council. We stand united with our Serbian friends when it comes to Resolution 1244 and to it fully remaining current," Lavrov noted at a Moscow press conference with Djuric.

Lavrov said they had discussed the situation in southeastern Europe and that, in a broader sense, Russia supported the course steered by the Serbian leadership with the aim of building constructive and goodneighbourly relations with all Balkan states.

He said Russia considered Belgrade the most important factor for regional stability.

Lavrov added that Serbia understood the causes of the start of Russia's special military operation in Ukraine and noted that Russia appreciated Serbia's balanced and sovereign foreign policy and saw it as the foundation of development of bilateral relations in the future.

He said there were several mechanisms for developing the ties between the two countries, the most important one being a joint committee on trade and economic, scientific and technical cooperation, which last met in St Petersburg last November.

He said the meeting with Djuric had addressed a wide range of topics important for lending further impetus to trade cooperation and boosting goods trade, which he added had dropped slightly in the first ten months of last year.

"We confirmed a commitment to developing our ties in other areas - health care, innovation and high technologies. For our part, we confirmed a readiness for cooperation when it comes to Serbia's major plans to modernise transport infrastructure for the specialised EXPO 2027 in Belgrade," Lavrov said.