In power for almost ten years, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic is known for his brilliant use of the art of speaking by drowning the fish, which allows him to navigate his country between the interests of the great powers, while swearing that he wants to lead it – one day – into the European Union (EU). But, on the eve of a new early legislative election which he called on Sunday December 17 and which he will most certainly win, the 53-year-old leader has, for once, clearly detailed his deep geopolitical thoughts. And this is not very compatible with European values.
On December 12, on Happy TV, one of the many television channels close to power where this giant of almost two meters with a baby face appears almost every day to campaign for his movement, the Serbian Progressive Party, he thus displayed his admiration for the former dictator Slobodan Milosevic, of whom he was the Minister of Information before his fall in 2000. Died in detention in 2006 in The Hague before the end of his trial for crimes against humanity and genocide, Milosevic was a man “with excellent presence and exceptional diction”boasted Mr. Vucic in front of the cameras, without a word of consideration for the victims of the Serbian army during the Balkan wars.
While he officially broke with nationalism in 2008 to become pro-European, Mr. Vucic, who became prime minister and then president since 2014, assured “reproach only one thing” to his former mentor: “Not having better understood the external circumstances” in 1999, when Serbia was bombed by NATO in retaliation for massacres committed by its army in Kosovo. “He should have said stop after four or five days, because there are times when you have to accept certain defeats”he explains, taking the example “Alievs in Azerbaijan”who first lost Nagorno-Karabakh following a heavy military defeat against Armenia in 1994, then ended up recovering it in September after a blitzkrieg.
Also listen Nagorno-Karabakh: how the Armenians lost the enclave after decades of war
Taking advantage of the weakness of the Armenians’ Russian ally, Ilham Aliev, the Azerbaijani president, in power since 2003 following his father, waited “twenty-seven years of having favorable geopolitical opportunities”, praises the Serbian, observing the reaction of his interlocutors over his glasses. All Serbs then understood the message: their president hopes to bring about the same fate in Kosovo, which proclaimed its independence in 2008 but which Belgrade still categorically refuses to recognize. Mr. Vucic also mentions the “important American elections” of November 2024, poorly hiding his hope of seeing former President Donald Trump return to power.
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