By Olena Harmash and Ivana Sekularac<\/p>\n
BELGRADE\/KYIV, Aug 8 (Reuters) – Belgrade will support Ukraine’s independence and aims to improve economic cooperation between the two countries, President Aleksandar Vucic said \u200con Saturday, but he stopped short of any pledge to impose sanctions on Serbia’s long-time \u200cally Russia.<\/p>\n
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is on a two-day visit to Belgrade ending on Saturday. It is his first since \u200bhe became president in 2019, although his wife Olena visited Belgrade in 2024.<\/p>\n
Vucic, a populist who faces early elections in the coming months, is striving to maintain a delicate balance between the Serbia’s aspiration to join the European Union and historic and economic ties with Russia.<\/p>\n
Belgrade condemned Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine in 2022, \u200cbut has refused to impose sanctions \u2060on Russia. Serbia also remains dependent on Russia for most of its gas.<\/p>\n
TERRITORIAL INTEGRITY<\/p>\n
Vucic, who has met Zelenskiy several times, most recently in Kyiv on July 15, \u2060said Serbia will maintain support for Ukraine’s territorial integrity, including territories seized by Russia since 2014.<\/p>\n
For its part, Ukraine has refused to recognise the 2008 independence of Kosovo, which Belgrade considers as part of Serbia.<\/p>\n
“You have \u200bnever heard \u200ba single bad word about our country, neither \u200bfrom Volodymyr Zelenskiy nor anyone else (in Ukraine), \u200cand I am extremely grateful to our Ukrainian friends for that,” Vucic said.<\/p>\n
Vucic said he was sceptical that either Serbia or Ukraine would achieve rapid accession to the European Union, but that Belgrade would support Kyiv’s bid to join the bloc.<\/p>\n
Both Vucic and Zelenskiy said the two countries want to improve economic cooperation and complete a free trade agreement by the end of the year. The deal is \u200ccrucial for Serbia’s bid to join the World Trade \u200bOrganisation, and a prerequisite for its EU membership. Ukraine has \u200bbeen blocking it since 2005 over quotas \u200band tariffs for its agricultural sector.<\/p>\n
Zelenskiy said he and Vucic discussed joint infrastructure \u200cprojects and cooperation on energy and food security \u200bfor the upcoming winter \u200bin Ukraine, heavily hit by Russian attacks on energy facilities.<\/p>\n
“We are developing all formats of cooperation which can give our people … more resilience,” Zelenskiy said.<\/p>\n
The Kremlin has accused Belgrade several times \u200bof selling ammunition to Ukraine \u200cvia intermediaries. Belgrade has denied it supplied ammunition to Ukraine but has said it \u200bhas sold to other buyers worldwide. Vucic said he and Zelenskiy did not discuss military \u200bcooperation.<\/p>\n
(Writing by Aleksandar Vasovic; Editing by Barbara Lewis)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Olena Harmash and Ivana Sekularac BELGRADE\/KYIV, Aug 8 (Reuters) – Belgrade will support Ukraine’s independence and aims…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25727,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[6983,9024,7122,25,2558,26,412],"class_list":["post-25726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-aleksandar-vucic","tag-belgrade","tag-economic-cooperation","tag-russia","tag-serbia","tag-ukraine","tag-volodymyr-zelenskiy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25726"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25726\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}