Serbian Sanctions Against Russia Would Be Political ‘Suicide’

The government of Serbia wants to join the EU, but it has repeatedly stated in the past that Serbia won’t join EU-wide sanctions against Russia.

However, one of the essential conditions for Serbia to get closer with the EU would be to join the sanctions, Serbian newspaper Blic said, citing diplomatic sources in Belgrade.

For Serbia it would be the equivalent of a political suicide. The desire of certain Serbian politicians to get EU membership is over-obsessive and can be characterized as “Euro-fanatism,” Raskovic-Ivic said, adding that the pro-EU ideals aren’t popular among ordinary Serbs.

“We believe it’s necessary to organize a referendum as soon as possible, so that the citizens of Serbia could decide whether or not we should continue the process of Eurointegration,” the president of the Democratic Party of Serbia told Radio Sputnik.

The Serbian politician added that if things continue as they are, Serbia will become a colony that wouldn’t have its own national interests and would simply follow orders from Brussels. One of them would be the forced inclusion of Serbia into the anti-Russian rhetoric of the EU, the politician said.

Joining anti-Russian sanctions would be a political suicide for Serbia, Raskovic-Ivic said, adding that Serbia benefits both politically [Russia doesn’t recognize Kosovo’s independence] and economically [Moscow and Belgrade signed a free trade agreement] from friendly relations with Moscow.

“Russia never took territories from us, never bombed us. But now we’re trying to please those who did it and continue to humiliate us to this day. As a psychiatrist, I’d say that this is the behavior of a psychopath,” said Raskovic-Ivic, who holds a PhD in psychiatry and is the author of many scholarly papers on psychiatry and psychotherapy.