BELGRADE, Serbia — The US plans to impose sanctions against Serbia’s main gas supplier which is controlled by Russia, Serbia’s president said on Saturday.
President Aleksandar Vucic told state broadcaster RTS that Serbia has been officially informed that the decision on sanctions will take effect on January 1 but that he has so far not received any related documents from the US
There has been no comment from US officials.
Serbia is almost entirely dependent on Russian gas, which it receives through pipelines in neighboring states. The gas is then distributed by the Petroleum Industry of Serbia (NIS), which is majority-owned by Russia’s state oil monopoly Gazprom Neft.
Vucic said that after receiving the official documents, “we will talk to the Americans first, then we will go and talk to the Russians” to try to reverse the decision. “At the same time, we will try to preserve our friendly relations with the Russians and not destroy relations with those who impose sanctions,” he added.
Despite formally seeking EU membership, Serbia has refused to join Western sanctions against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, in part because of crucial Russian gas supplies.
Vucic said that despite the embargo threat, “I am not ready at this time to discuss potential sanctions against Moscow.”
Asked if the threat of US sanctions against Serbia could change with the arrival of Donald Trump’s administration in January, Vucic said: “We need to get the (official) documents first and then talk to the current administration, because we are in a hurry.”
The Serbian president is facing one of the biggest threats to more than a decade of his increasingly autocratic rule. Protests have spread by university students and others who follow collapsed last month from a concrete roof at a railway station in the north of the country that killed 15 people on 1 November.
Many in Serbia believe rampant corruption and nepotism among government officials led to sloppy work on the reconstruction of the building, which was part of a larger railway project with Chinese state-owned enterprises.
