Serbian Deputy Prime Minister and former intelligence chief Aleksandar Vulin has arrived in Russia, where he is set to meet with Vladimir Putin, less than a week after Serbia bought French Rafale fighter jets, Serbian media reported.
Alexander Vulin, who has been sanctioned by the US, resigned in November 2023 from his position as head of the intelligence services. “The United States and the European Union are asking for my head so they don’t impose sanctions on Serbia,” he said at the time.
Volin is due to meet with the Russian president on the sidelines of an economic forum being held in Vladivostok.
He was appointed deputy prime minister in the spring, after President Aleksandar Vucic’s party won the last election.
Serbia, which never imposed sanctions on Russia after the start of the war in Ukraine in February 2022, maintains good relations with Moscow, and Vulin is one of the architects of those relations.
France, which in late August helped sell 12 Dassault aviation Rafale fighter jets to Serbia, also hoped to distance Belgrade from Moscow, which has until now supplied warplanes to Serbia.
“The Rafale purchase was made for military reasons,” Vulin had already stated the next day to the Russian TASS agency, “and it will in no way have a negative impact on the relations between the Republic of Serbia and the Russian Federation.” Serbia remains militarily neutral and will not participate in the anti-Russian hysteria or any form of anti-Russian sanctions.”
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