MOSCOW, March 24. /TASS/. Russia understands Serbia's choice for European integration, but now the European Union has become an aggressive appendage of NATO and is putting pressure on Belgrade, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with TASS General Director Andrey Kondrashov for the Belgrade documentary project.
"We perfectly understand the position the President of Serbia sets out, declaring that the people have made a European, European integration choice," he said.
But Lavrov noted that currently the European Union is "a rather aggressive structure, which - especially with the signing of a relevant document on coordination with NATO not so long ago - has lost its geopolitical independence and has become a military-economic appendage of the North Atlantic Alliance."
"It’s no wonder that the EU is aggressively putting pressure on Serbia and personally on President Aleksandar Vucic, demanding that he, firstly, recognize the independence of Kosovo, and, secondly, join the position of the European Union, the position of the West against the Russian Federation, including joining all sanctions," the minister stressed.
The Russian top diplomat stressed that Moscow never opposed the accession of states to the European Union when it "developed as an integration association designed to maximize the comparative advantages of member countries, solve economic and social issues in this community more effectively, more rationally, create logistics facilities."
"We then declared loudly and openly that we had no problems with countries joining the EU. Unlike NATO expansion," he stated.
"As for Kosovo, this is another example at the second stage of the Kosovo drama and tragedy, which shows the incapacity and inability of the European Union to negotiate," the minister concluded.
On integration of Kosovo
The Serbian autonomous region of Kosovo and Metohija has recently been actively seeking to join international organizations. More than half of the 193 UN countries, including Russia, India and China, oppose recognition of Kosovo. Until now, of the 27 EU countries, Kosovo has not been recognized by Spain, Greece, Cyprus, Slovakia, and Romania.
Nevertheless, Brussels is putting intense pressure on Belgrade, pushing it to recognize the sovereignty of the region, which will remove the grounds for its non-recognition by EU countries and open up opportunities to begin the process of its integration into the EU separately from Serbia.