Serbia’s president Aleksandar Vucic has thrown his country’s future in the European Union into doubt by suggesting it could instead join Brics, the global economic bloc hosted in Russia this week by Vladimir Putin.
Belgrade has long performed an East-West balancing act, but with the war in Ukraine forcing the world to take sides, the scales are tilting evermore toward the Kremlin.
Russian and Belarusian dissidents sheltering inside the country have told The Times that Serbian authorities have begun a crackdown against them at the Kremlin’s behest, while an opposition MP has accused Aleksandar Vulin, the deputy prime minister, of breaking a Putin ally out of Italian custody and spiriting him away to Moscow on a charter flight from Belgrade. Serbia has also refused to