Zelensky Makes First-Ever Visit To Serbia — Kyiv Openly Says Its Goal Is To Pull Belgrade Away From Russia – CDM – Human Reporters • Not Machines

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will travel to Belgrade on Saturday, August 8, in what officials on both sides describe as his first official visit to Serbia since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in 2022, per reporting by the Kyiv Independent and ZeroHedge. The visit carries enormous diplomatic weight in a region where historical, religious, and ethnic ties between Serbia and Russia have long complicated Western pressure campaigns to isolate Moscow.

Kyiv has made its strategic intentions explicit. A senior Ukrainian official told reporters — without naming themselves — that “we need to pull the Serbs away from Russia’s side,” per ZeroHedge. That framing matters: this is not a diplomatic courtesy call. It is a lobbying mission. The Ukrainian side is expected to press Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić to join Western sanctions against Russia, a position Belgrade has consistently refused to adopt despite years of European Union pressure.

Vučić himself, speaking ahead of the visit, struck a measured tone. “I believe we will discuss how and in what ways we can help each other” on EU integration, energy cooperation, and economic ties, he said, per ZeroHedge. He notably did not mention sanctions. His government has stressed repeatedly that Serbia’s position on Russia will remain unchanged. That is a statement of sovereignty that Brussels and Washington have repeatedly failed to override.

Serbia’s energy situation illustrates why sanctions capitulation is so costly for Belgrade. The country is heavily dependent on Russian crude oil flowing through the Russian-majority-owned NIS refinery — Serbia’s only oil refinery. As recently as July 31, Serbia secured yet another U.S. OFAC sanctions waiver allowing NIS to continue importing Russian crude until August 28, while Hungarian firm MOL negotiates to buy the Russian majority stake, per JP. Serbia literally cannot function economically without Russian energy, and no Western offer has been adequate to change that calculus.

There is a separate dimension that the visit will not openly address: Serbia’s role as a transit point for weapons flowing to Ukraine. Regional analysts and unnamed Western officials have for months accused Belgrade of functioning as a critical node in what one commentator on X described as “NATO’s Balkan arms pipeline” — a secretive but large-scale flow of Serbian ammunition to Ukrainian forces that has earned Belgrade billions of dollars and purchased tolerance with Western capitals, according to Petrit Selimi, a former senior Kosovo diplomat who posted on X August 6. Serbia has denied facilitating any such pipeline.

Russia is not pleased with the visit. Per ZeroHedge, the Kremlin views Zelensky’s arrival in Belgrade as a significant symbolic provocation — a Slavic Orthodox nation opening its doors to Ukraine while the war continues. Vučić already drew Russian ire by skipping Moscow’s Victory Day parade this year. The Belgrade visit signals that Serbia, while refusing sanctions, is nonetheless performing a gradual westward tilt for a European Union membership process that remains uncertain in its timeline and terms.

For American taxpayers and observers watching the foreign policy machine at work, the Serbia gambit reflects the globalist playbook in miniature: pressure a small sovereign nation to sacrifice its economic and diplomatic interests, isolate a nuclear power further, and extend a war that has already consumed hundreds of thousands of lives. Serbia has so far declined to play along. Whether Zelensky’s charm offensive on August 8 changes that calculation will depend on what, if anything, the West actually offers Belgrade in return. History suggests that offer will be far less substantial than the ask.

The campaign against Serbia also fits the Zelenskiy anti-Christian persecution he is championing in his own country of Ukraine. Serbia is a bastion of the Christian culture in the Balkans. Now its also a globalist target.