Vucic: It is unnatural for Serbia to join Russia sanctions

TIRANA - Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said on Tuesday Belgrade had not imposed sanctions on Russia out of respect for everything the people of Serbia had gone through during a decade of sanctions against their country.

Vucic was speaking to reporters in Tirana, where he attended an EU-Western Balkans summit alongside EU and Western Balkan leaders.

"I told them the attitude to sanctions is, above all, an attitude to ourselves, Serbs and Serbian citizens, and not someone else. That is a matter of respect for ourselves and for what we went through during the ten years under sanctions. We saw that sanctions bring no good to the citizens or the people, so it is not natural for us to participate in these sanctions," he said when asked if he stood by the Tirana Declaration, adopted at the summit.

"I cannot stand by that declaration because I did not write it. But I have nothing against them writing that we have not agreed to the sanctions and that we have not imposed them," Vucic said.

He noted that he was unable to reveal everything he had said at the summit, but added that he had been very candid and straightforward and that everyone had thanked him for that.

Commenting on destruction of energy infrastructure in Ukraine, Vucic said he had reminded his discussion partners at the summit that Serbia's energy infrastructure had been destroyed in the same way during the 1999 NATO bombing.

When asked if he would still impose sanctions on Russia, Vucic responded the decision was not up to the EU.

"The people of Serbia and the parliament and the government of Serbia will decide about that and, as president of Serbia and someone who has the greatest legitimacy of all elected representatives in the country, I will have a bit of a say in that, too," he said.