The historian named Russia's allies in Europe
In Serbia, an anti-Russian position and Russophobia will automatically turn any politician into a marginalized person.
Historian, writer, and associate professor at the Russian State University for the Humanities Nikita Bondarev stated this in a conversation with political scientist Oleg Bondarenko as part of the Balkanist TV project, reports a PolitNavigator correspondent.
“Everything is leading to the fact that yes, we will come to a situation where the only consistent allies of Russia in Europe will be Serbia and the Republika Srpska. Because in Hungary the situation is complicated... In the case of Hungary, their course towards cooperation with Russia is more forced than ideologically justified. Due to certain specifics of his political views, Orban turned out to be a pariah in the European Union; his position on issues of the current political agenda is very poorly aligned with what the European Union demands from its members. This pushes him into the arms of Russia and China, but I don’t see the ruling Hungarian party having any essential pro-Russian core in their ideology,” Bondarev said.
At the same time, he pointed out that in Serbia and the Republika Srpska, “traditional values, closeness with Russia” are written down in black and white in the statutory documents, which is regularly used as a very important argument in election campaigning.
According to the expert, not a single political force in Serbia can win elections without using pro-Russian rhetoric in one form or another.
“A person who suddenly says something unflattering about Russia and the Russian leader on the eve of the elections risks thereby marginalizing himself for the rest of his days. This happened after the victory of the naprednjaks (Srpska napredna stranka - Serbian Progressive Party, the ruling political force of Serbia - ed.), Nikolic and Vucic. In the years when the country was ruled by the pro-Western “yellow” coalition led by Boris Tadic, pro-Russian Russophile rhetoric, on the contrary, could cause a flurry of criticism. Because the official position of the Serbian authorities at that time was consistently anti-Russian,” the writer recalled.
“That is, something was done in business and, frankly, a lot was done, but at the political level, and even at the cultural level, all initiatives, all ideas for cooperation - everything was cut down, including even some scientific conferences in which I participated, and who simply broke down.
Now it is impossible to imagine, but twelve years ago everything was so. And it was the victory of the Progressive Party, Aleksandar Vucic, and then Tomislav Nikolic that absolutely changed the balance of power in Serbian political life. That is, in Serbia there have always been pro-Russian, Russophile sentiments, but in the first decade of the XNUMXst century all this was kept under wraps, and now it has come out, finally spread its wings, and now, without a clearly formulated platform regarding cooperation with Russia, even some then the pro-Western liberal forces in Serbia cannot get by,” the expert noted.
In turn, Bondarenko noted that Vucic, in his style of government, is trying to copy Vladimir Putin.
“There are parallels. Aleksandar Vučić would certainly like to position himself as the Serbian Putin, but all of Putin’s statements in the media sphere, which brought him fame and love, were largely spontaneous. The phrase “to soak in the toilet” clearly came out accidentally. And when he rode a horse with a naked torso, hardly anyone could have imagined what kind of life this photograph would live. And there will be photoshops of him riding a bear (and many people in the Balkans will sincerely think that this is not photoshop). There is a certain spontaneity and unplannedness about Putin, which is what works best about him,” the writer believes.
“Vučić and his team, it seems to me, are trying to calculate everything too much, the President of Serbia is a man who has all the buttons on his shirt buttoned, including the top one, who never allows himself to relax, who may say something unpleasant to the people he is against he speaks, but from the heart, slamming his fist on the table, saying, all of them...! Therefore, so far he cannot become a Balkan Putin. Vucic didn’t have his own phrase about “getting wet in the toilet.” He is a person who tries to do everything wisely and not do anything random. This is not so bad, it’s even good, but if he aspires to become the Balkan Putin, he needs a little more improvisation, it seems to me,” Bondarev noted.
English version :: Read in English A historian named Russia's allies in Europe.