Russian Foreign Minister Banned From Europe Airspace
by Stefan Bos, Worthy News Chief International Correspondent
MOSCOW/BUDAPEST (Worthy News) – Russia’s foreign minister said late Monday he had invited his Serbian counterpart to Moscow after three eastern European countries blocked his plane from traveling to Serbia.
Sergei Lavrov said he invited Serbian Foreign Minister Nikola Selakovic to visit “in the immediate future,” hoping that the European Union would not hinder this visit.
“I hope that his flight, whether a regular or a special one, would not be subjected to a disgraceful punishment on behalf of Brussels, which along with its clients practically lost the sense of the norms of decency,” Lavrov added.
Bulgaria, North Macedonia, and Montenegro had refused to provide an air corridor for Lavrov’s aircraft, which was reportedly already on its route to Belgrade, Serbia’s capital.
The Russian foreign minister said his disrupted visit to Serbia “envisaged a number of very useful and well-timed meetings” with Selkovic, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, and parliamentary speaker Ivica Dacic.
Lavrov told reporters that if “a visit by the Russian foreign minister to Serbia is seen in the West as something approaching a threat on a universal scale, then things in the West are clearly pretty bad.”
Serbia and Russia are close allies, with Serbia’s interior minister, Aleksandar Vulin, saying he deeply regretted “the obstruction” of the visit of Lavrov, “a great and proven friend of Serbia.”
Vulin stressed that “a world in which diplomats cannot seek peace is a world in which there is no peace. Those who prevented the arrival of Sergei Lavrov do not want peace; they dream of defeating Russia.”
The Serbian minister stressed that “Serbia is proud that it is not part of the anti-Russian hysteria, and the countries that are will have time to be ashamed.”
President Vucic was re-elected for a second term in April, but the war in Ukraine presented the president with a significant challenge. Serbia is seemingly poised between its application to be a member of the EU and an instinctive alliance with Russia, commentators say.
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