BELGRADE, Serbia — The United States plans to impose sanctions against Serbia’s main gas supplier that is controlled by Russia, the Serbian president said on Saturday.
President Aleksandar Vucic told state broadcaster RTS that Serbia has been officially informed that the decision on the sanctions will come into effect on January 1, but that he has not received any related documents from the US so far.
No comment was received from U.S. officials.
Serbia is almost entirely dependent on Russian gas, which it receives through pipelines in neighboring countries. The gas is then distributed by Petroleum Industry of Serbia (NIS), which is majority owned by Russian state oil monopoly Gazprom Neft.
Vucic said that after receiving the official documents “we will first talk to the Americans and then we will talk to the Russians” to try to reverse the decision. “At the same time, we will try to maintain friendly relations with the Russians and not to spoil relations with those who impose sanctions,” he added.
Although Serbia is formally seeking membership of the European Union, it has refused to join Western sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, in part because of crucial Russian gas supplies.
Vucic said that despite the embargo threat, “I am not ready at this time to discuss possible sanctions against Moscow.”
Asked whether the threat of US sanctions against Serbia could change with the arrival of Donald Trump’s administration in January, Vucic said: “We must first obtain the (official) documents and then talk to the current administration, because we are in a hurry to have. ”
The Serbian president is facing one of the biggest threats in more than a decade of his increasingly autocratic rule. Protests have spread by university students and others following the election collapse of a concrete roof last month at a train station in the north of the country, killing 15 people on November 1.
Many in Serbia believe that rampant corruption and nepotism among state officials led to shoddy work on the reconstruction of the building, which was part of a broader railway project with Chinese state-owned companies.