Serbia links its rejection of EU’s demand for sanctions on Russia with potential €15 billion loss

Sanctions against Russia would cost Serbia 15 billion euros, and such losses could put the country at risk of destruction.

Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandar Vulin made the statement in a conversation with the Russian state news agency TASS, Caliber.Az reports.

"If we had followed the irrational and hysterical policy of the EU towards Russia, Serbia would have directly lost at least 15 billion euros, and no one in the EU would have even considered compensating for this," he emphasized.

Vulin also pointed out that Serbia is "not ready to finance the war in Ukraine."

"The fact that the EU cares so little about Serbia is evident from the fact that our sanctions against Russia would have caused minimal harm to Russia, but would have destroyed us — and yet, the EU insists that we do this," the Serbian deputy prime minister stated.

Earlier, a source told TASS that the European Union launched a procedure to put Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandar Vulin on the sanctions list after his speech in the European Parliament, where he made a number of statements about relations with Brussels and Moscow. The agency's interlocutor also said that Brussels had demanded that Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic remove Vulin from the new government.

By Khagan Isayev