Russia’s official media have widely publicized the fact that during Vladimir Putin’s recent visit to Serbia he was greeted by hundreds of thousands of its citizens. Well, there is a reason for this. Putin did not come to his Serbian brothers empty-handed. It was announced that Russia plans to invest $1.4 billion in the development of Serbia’s infrastructure. This, of course, raised perplexing questions in Russia itself.
Moreover, it was implied that the gigantic temple in which the Serbs held a service for Putin was also built with significant Russian participation. It is not reported from which budget of an officially secular state the money for the construction of a temple for a foreign religion was allocated. «They provided the money where they needed it,» is the only implied answer to such questions in a country where the pockets of the state, the ruling oligarchy and the church are indistinguishably intertwined.
But Putin brought not only material gifts, but also «spiritual» ones, if one can call them that. At a press conference for Serbian journalists, he accused the West of «scattering the Serbian people among different states. In other words, it is implied that the independent states were created by the nations whose names they bear: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Montenegro, not to mention Kosovo, do not actually belong to them, but to the «Serbian people». In other words, Putin’s attitude toward the former Yugoslavia is the same as his attitude toward the USSR, which he called Russia after losing a significant part of its territory when it collapsed. And the Chekist, who devoted a significant part of his life to protecting the Soviet regime, is unaware that just as the USSR was intended to be a union of equal republics, the same was planned for Yugoslavia. And just when the president — the great Serbian chauvinist Slobodan Milosevic — began to turn it into «Greater Serbia», the non-Serb peoples decided to stay away from it, which now, thanks to Putin, the peoples of Russia and its neighbors are pushing…
However, the Serbs generously paid Putin with gratitude for his gifts — verbally, of course, as they always do with Russians. Besides applause and literal deification by fans in the streets, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic separately thanked Putin for… supporting genocide. Yes, we did not misspeak. Vucic stated that «the Serbian people will never forget that Russia, under Putin’s leadership, vetoed a UN resolution condemning the genocide in Srebrenica.»
Recall that in 1995, Srebrenica witnessed the most massive war crime in the history of post-war Europe, when some 8,000 unarmed Bosnian Muslim men were executed in the wooded environs of that captured town over the course of several days, despite assurances of safety previously given to them by the Serbian command. This crime has been recognized as genocide, for which Serbia bears responsibility, both by the Hague Tribunal and by the international community as a whole. With the exception of Russia, which blocked this recognition in the UN, just as it blocked the recognition of the genocide of the Rohingya Muslims.
By the way, it has to be said that at that time Vucic himself asked for an apology for what Serbia had done in Srebrenica, positioning himself as a pro-European politician. But that was at a time when Putin, according to him, had not yet «elevated Russia» and at the same time fueled revanchist sentiments and ambitions among his «brothers».
At the same time, it seems that the Russians themselves are beginning to get tired of all this bragging and throwing money around the world. The latest poll, even by the official VCIOM, showed that Putin’s rating in Russia — not in Serbia — is currently 33.4%, which is a historical low for him. Let’s hope that’s just for now…