By Sorin Dojan - Russia Team

Take a stroll through the streets of Pristina, Kosovo, and at one point you will come across the statue of a smiling Bill Clinton, a stone’s throw away from a chic boutique named Hillary. 

To many wondering how a presidential couple became the unlikely heroes in a partially recognised country like Kosovo, 1999 might offer a clue. Between March and June that year, a NATO coalition bombed Yugoslavia in response to Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic’s ethnic cleansing campaign in Kosovo. 

To Russians, this marked the beginning of a tumultuous relationship with the West. To Serbs, it reminded them of how vulnerable their country was when, after the 1990s Yugoslav wars, they found themselves surrounded by NATO and the European Union (EU), as the two expanded eastwards. Yet both Russia and Serbia found an ally in each other.

Ever since Kosovo’s declaration of independence in 2008, Russia has been Serbia’s main backer of sovereignty claims over Kosovo. This has proven particularly handy amid rising EU pressure on Belgrade to normalise ties with Pristina as a precondition for accession[1]. And while the Serbian Government remains on track to join the EU[2], this has not stopped the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) from securing another three months of Russian gas imports at the end of March 2026.

Call it ‘hedging’ or the practice of foreign policy balancing between competing forces[3]. Serbia has done so since 2009, when it announced its ‘Four Pillars’ strategy to balance between the West, Russia and China[4] at a time of EU ‘enlargement fatigue’[5].

Yet rising tensions nowadays between Serbia, the EU and the US, as well as the former’s foreign policy inconsistencies, could dash Moscow’s hopes for a sustainable relationship, as Belgrade sticks to its strategic ambitions to join the EU.

Serbia, Russia and the wider geopolitical nexus

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has turned Serbia’s multi-vector foreign policy into a much more challenging tool to navigate. For once, it led to more criticism from the EU Commission, among other things, over Belgrade’s choice not to impose sanctions on Moscow following the full-scale attack. If, in 2021, the Commission had only 12 references to Russia in its Serbia report, that number rose to 57 in 2022 and 2023, and remained high thereafter[6]. 

Yet a much stronger reply came from Washington. In November 2023, the US State Department targeted multiple individuals and entities over their alleged connection to what it described as Russian influence in the Western Balkans. As recently as September 2025, US officials sanctioned Serbia’s oil company NIS over its ties to the Kremlin’s energy sector. 

For a small state like Serbia, sanctions translate into significant economic hardship. Belgrade could seek to buy more time by obtaining sanctions waivers from the US (it secured one at the end of March due to the US-Iran war) or by securing contract extensions with the Kremlin, but this would not make its multi-vector policy more sustainable. 

Image generated using AI (DALL·E)

The EU remains Serbia’s largest trading partner, accounting for little over 58% of the country’s total trade in 2024. Yet European patience could be running thin: during a visit to Belgrade, EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Kaja Kallas, urged the Serbian government to deliver on the reforms critical to accession prospects, adding that there are no ‘shortcuts for [EU] membership’. This includes aligning its foreign policies with the bloc, including those on Russia, with Brussels arguing in its 2022 report that Serbia’s close ties to Moscow raise questions about its strategic direction.

This is enough of a signal for the Kremlin to understand that Serbia’s hedging policy is under severe pressure at the moment. Relations between the two countries were already fraught after €800m of Serbian ammunition ended up in Ukraine through Belgrade’s trading partners between 2022 and 2024, prompting criticism from the Russian foreign intelligence service, the SVR. And overall trade, energy, and defence ties between Moscow and Belgrade have declined in recent years, despite the two continuing to tout their “Slavic brotherhood” as the underpinning of their relations. China, which is Serbia’s other significant non-Western partner, was the country’s second-largest source of foreign direct investment in 2024[7].

If anything, Moscow’s leverage over Belgrade remains mostly in the energy sector and through its membership of the United Nations Security Council, where it can still oppose any Western-led move on Kosovo (although that did not prevent the US and its allies from bombing Yugoslavia in 1999). This will reassure the Kremlin in its relations with Serbia, particularly as Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic clings to power following a year marked by severe student-led anti-corruption protests. For now, the relationship still holds.

[1] Vuk Vuksanovic, Serbia’s Balancing Act: Between Russia and the West (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2025), 73.

[2] Republic of Serbia, “European Union Remains Serbia’s Strategic Development Framework,” srbija.gov.rs, January 19, 2026, https://www.srbija.gov.rs/vest/en/267475/european-union-remains-serbias-strategic-development-framework.php.

[3] Evelyn Goh, “Understanding ‘Hedging’ in Asia-Pacific Security,” PacNet 43 (Pacific Forum CSIS, August 31, 2006), https://csis-website-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/legacy_files/files/media/csis/pubs/pac0643.pdf.

[4] Vuksanovic, Serbia’s Balancing Act: Between Russia and the West.

[5] Anna Szolucha, “The EU and Enlargement Fatigue: Why has the European Union not been able to counter enlargement fatigue?”, Journal of Contemporary European Research 6, no 1.

[6] European Commission, Serbia 2022 Report (Brussels: European Commission, October 12, 2022); European Commission, Serbia 2023 Report(Brussels: European Commission, 11 November 2023); European Commission, Serbia 2024 Report (Brussels: European Commission, 30 October 2024); European Commission, Serbia 2025 Report (Brussels: European Commission, 4 November 2025).

[7] Filipović, Slobodan, and Katarina Zakić, “Economic Implications of Serbia’s Multi-Vector Foreign Policy,” The Review of International Affairs 76, no. 1195 (2025): 503–28, https://doi.org/10.18485/iipe_ria.2025.76.1195.6.