EditThe four broken chairs of Aleksandar Vučić
In 2025 Serbia abandoned its foreign policy doctrine based on the “four pillars” - the EU, the United States, Russia, and China
The passing year demonstrated how isolated and alone Serbia has become in foreign policy after 13 years of Vučić’s rule, writes Nikolay Krastev.
Nikolay Krastev is a seasoned journalist specializing in the Western Balkans. He hosts the YouTube podcast #Балкани, produced by Bulgarian National Television.
2025 was one of the most challenging years Serbia has experienced, not only in terms of domestic politics but also foreign policy. Alongside mass protests by students and large segments of Serbian society demanding the resignation of President Aleksandar Vučić – whom they accuse of being the source of corruption, nepotism, and authoritarianism – Serbia effectively bid farewell to its independent foreign policy.
In the end of 2024, the outgoing U.S. administration of President Joe Biden imposed sanctions on Serbia’s national oil company NIS (Naftna industrija Srbije) because, as a Russian energy asset in the Balkans owned by Gazprom, it was being used to finance the Kremlin’s aggression in Ukraine.
Vučić said at the time that he did not understand why an outgoing American administration would make such a move and calmly announced that, with Donald Trump becoming the 47th President of the United States, the issue would be resolved and the sanctions lifted. However, over the past 12 months, not only were the sanctions not removed – they were deepened.
After Washington repeatedly delayed imposing them, the sanctions finally took effect. The U.S. Treasury Department enforced them, and from the beginning of November, the NIS refinery in the city of Pančevo ceased operations. This situation arose after Vučić and his foreign policy team squandered 11 months without resolving this critical issue for the economic and financial stability of the Balkan state – an issue that will have repercussions into the new year of 2026.
The Serbian president relied far too heavily on the belief that a meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump would settle the matter. He visited the United States in early May, expecting Trump to receive him, but no such meeting ever took place to address the problem.
Trump neither invited him to the White House nor, even less so, to his Mar-a-Lago estate. Because of this embarrassing situation, Vučić claimed he had developed a serious health issue that required him to return quickly to Belgrade, flying nearly 11,000 km without issue. Just two days later, he travelled to Moscow for Vladimir Putin’s parade marking the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe.
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But neither in Moscow at that time nor at the end of the summer in Beijing was Vučić able to obtain from Putin a resolution to the fate of NIS.
In 2025, Serbia abandoned its foreign policy doctrine based on the “four pillars” – the EU, the United States, Russia, and China.
This framework had defined Belgrade’s relations with the main international players for nearly the past 20 years. Upon coming to power, however, Aleksandar Vučić fetishized it, declaring that Belgrade would work independently and equally well with all international actors, guided solely by Serbia’s national interests. The view of international relations as an all-inclusive buffet from which Belgrade could freely take whatever it liked from all major global powers changed dramatically after the Kremlin’s aggression in Ukraine began in early 2022.
And Vučić learned this the hard way in 2025.
The first lesson was that Serbia is not the former Yugoslavia, which conducted skillful foreign policy through the Non-Aligned Movement from the 1960s to the 1980s. The second is that Vučić has likely parted with his illusion of being Tito’s political heir and that he could, like Tito, treat the United States and the USSR (Russia) as equals—without acknowledging that the world has irrevocably changed and that one cannot step into the same river twice.
Instead, he became the butt of jokes over the Serbian oil company NIS, as depicted by the well-known Belgrade cartoonist Predrag Koraksić (Corax), who portrayed him as a ball being passed back and forth between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. The past year was also a serious test for Serbian-Russian relations, which the ruling elite in Belgrade presented as exceptionally close. But are they really?
Throughout 2025, Russia refused to resolve the NIS problem and, in its familiar diplomatic tone, claimed that the West and the EU wanted to destroy their friendly relations. Guided by its own political and economic interests in the Balkans, Moscow clearly showed everyone – as Belgrade crisis management expert Darko Obradović commented to BNT – that it does not want to part with NIS.
According to him, the Kremlin uses NIS as a political tool to influence public processes in the Balkan country while maintaining the myth of sincere friendship between Serbs and Russians.
For Moscow, according to numerous assessments by independent Serbian analysts, NIS has only minor significance in energy terms; its value with respect to Serbia is primarily political.
During his annual press conference, Russian President Putin sent a clear message to Belgrade that the NIS issue could not simply be resolved and assessed the value of the Serbian refinery at nearly €3.5 billion – despite Gazprom Neft having acquired it in 2008 for $400 million as part of a larger package tied to the unrealized Russian South Stream gas pipeline.
Russia was unwilling to do anything regarding NIS, even though Serbia, along with Belarus, remained one of the only European countries that did not impose sanctions on it over the aggression in Ukraine… And this, according to Srećko Đukić, former ambassador of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to Sofia in the late 1990s, proved that Moscow uses Belgrade however it pleases, with the NIS issue serving as evidence.
Regarding gas supplies to Serbia, Russia applies only short-term solutions, providing gas for one or at most three months. Independent energy experts in Belgrade cited Bulgaria’s experience with appointing a special administrator for the Russian refinery in Burgas as a possible model for Serbia. Vučić, however, commented that Serbia would not seize foreign property, even though he had offered Moscow the temporary buyback of its stake.
Thus, on the NIS issue, Serbia found itself caught between the hammer and the anvil in its relations with the United States and Russia.
Serbia’s refusal to halt the sale of the former Yugoslav army headquarters building to Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, for the construction of a Trump Tower added even greater uncertainty to relations with Washington. Đukić reminded regional television N1 that in the 20th century, Serbia was under sanctions for 25 years and that during that period, his country had learned nothing.
Another way Moscow keeps Belgrade in check is by preventing Kosovo from gaining international recognition and UN membership.
This year, Serbia waged its second diplomatic battle – similar to the one in 2013–2014 – convincing a number of countries, mainly in Africa and Asia, to withdraw their recognition of Kosovo. But it, too, appears to have ended rather ineffectively after Sudan and Syria decided to recognize the youngest Balkan state, which declared independence in 2008.
Serbia also worsened relations with Turkey after it delivered a shipment of drones to Kosovo, and it is well known that Ankara is one of Pristina’s strongest advocates.
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With this move, Vučić lost a Balkan ally in Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Relations with Brussels have stagnated for several years, with no progress, as Belgrade has not opened a single cluster in the past five years. At the end of 2025, Aleksandar Vučić refused to attend the annual EU-Western Balkans summit, which was a cold shower for Brussels, which had continuously courted Belgrade in an attempt to persuade it to recognize Kosovo, curb Russian influence in the Western Balkans, and help Serbia complete its European integration process.
Vučić floated the idea that all Western Balkan countries should be admitted together in 2030. It emerged as an attempt by Belgrade to avoid being overtaken by the small Adriatic state of Montenegro, from which it separated in 2006 following a referendum on independence.
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This foreign policy idea of Vučić found partial understanding in Paris, which announced it would not allow the opening of five negotiating chapters with Podgorica. Subsequently, however, after negotiations by Montenegrin Prime Minister Milojko Spajić, France and the European Commission agreed to open all five chapters.
Vučić tried to leverage the old French-Serbian friendship, but it proved weaker than the EU’s enlargement policy for the Western Balkans. After Paris received clear guarantees from Podgorica, Montenegro continued as a clear favorite to potentially join the EU by 2028. Albania is also among the frontrunners.
The hardening of the EU’s tone toward Belgrade showed that Brussels would no longer accommodate Vučić regarding the protests in Serbia or relations with Kosovo following the 2023 Ohrid Agreement with Pristina. During her visit to Belgrade, Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos very clearly told young people at a meeting that their concerns about corruption were also the EU’s concerns toward the Balkan country. The passing year demonstrated how isolated and alone Serbia has become in foreign policy after 13 years of Vučić’s rule and how the lack of genuine partners and clear goals can push it to the periphery of international relations.
Facing sanctions from Washington, blocked EU membership, and energy pressure from Russia over the NIS refinery, gas agreements, and accusations of supplying weapons to Ukraine, Serbia will need to reassess its foreign policy moves in light of new realities that require Belgrade to face reality head-on.
Will Vučić continue to manoeuvre between Moscow, Washington, Brussels, and Beijing as he has done until now? That remains to be seen. But one thing is clear: this foreign policy can no longer deliver the results Vučić seeks, and it is high time he decides which of the four chairs he will finally sit on.
Caption: Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic attends a joint press conference with the European Commission president following their meeting in Belgrade, Serbia, 15 October 2025. Von der Leyen is in Serbia as part of her tour of Western Balkan countries. EPA/ANDREJ CUKIC
Updated: June 6, 2026 - 07:38
