There is no denying that Serbia has failed to face up to the horrors in its recent past, but this is hardly relevant to pro-Putin sentiment in the country (The cult of Putin in Serbia reflects a nation that has still not dealt with its past, 28 October). While there is a significant number of hardcore Russophiles in Serbian society, polling shows that these are a noisy minority of around 21%. It also shows that 50% of Serbs want the country to maintain a policy of non-alignment, which reflects the Yugoslav-era status quo. These people are not committed to Russian interests, but they’re not pro-western either.
As a Serbian-born journalist, I’ve reported on why this is the case and have had countless informal discussions about the roots of anti-western sentiment in Serbia and this is entirely a result of the suffering that its citizens endured in the 1990s under international sanctions. It’s their lived experience and resentment towards western support for Kosovo’s independence, which they see as no different to Russia’s annexation of Crimea. So there is a very practical realpolitik explanation for this.
Where will it all end? The conflict in Ukraine appears further than ever from resolution. Nuclear threats, mass graves, the sense that both sides are “all in”.
It’s our job at the Guardian to decipher a rapidly changing landscape, and report the facts in sober fashion, without getting carried away. Our correspondents are on the ground in Ukraine and Russia and throughout the globe delivering round-the-clock reporting and analysis during this fluid situation.
We know there is no substitute for being there – and we’ll stay on the ground, as we did during the 1917 Russian Revolution, the Ukrainian famine of the 1930s, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the first Russo-Ukrainian conflict in 2014. We have an illustrious, 200-year history of reporting throughout Europe in times of upheaval, peace and everything in between. We won’t let up now.
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Search : TheGuardian : https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/06/anti-western-sentiment-in-serbia-is-not-rooted-in-support-for-putin
. While there is a significant number of hardcore Russophiles in Serbian society, polling shows that these are a noisy minority of around 21%. It also shows that 50% of Serbs want the country to maintain a policy of non-alignment, which reflects the Yugoslav-era status quo.){kind=link}