BELGRADE, November 5. /TASS/. The Center for Serbian-Russian Cooperation is launching a program dubbed "Communication in Russian" in Serbia. The center’s director, Milos Kovacevic, told TASS that the program would include 15 cities throughout the country, that is more than half of all Serbia’s cities.

"We want to bring the Russian language back to Serbia through the ‘Communication in Russian’ project. We plan to open free-of-charge courses of the Russian language in 15 Serbian cities. Apart from the Russian language, the students will have a chance to learn Russia’s great history, which we consider to be extremely important. The program also includes study of the Russian cinematography, Russian national cuisine and cultural aspects. A similar program, ‘Communication in Serbian,’ will be held in two Russian cities, Moscow and Sochi, thanks to which Russians will have an opportunity to learn Serbian," Kovacevic said.

"We believe that in a situation where two Slavs — a Russian and a Serb — use a foreign language, that is English, for communication is very absurd. It pushed us toward this initiative. If we don’t understand each other, all the rest is much more difficult to us," the center’s director said.

Kovacevic said that he and his friends thought of creating a youth center that would deal with the specific issues of Russian-Serbian relations at the 19th World Festival of the Youth and Students in Sochi. "We would like to bring this fine cooperation between our peoples to a higher level. We’ve studied Russian-Serbian relations for many years and noted that they lack some institution which would deal with the specific work of Russian-Serbian relations. The center’s activity fully complies with the strategic cooperation between our countries," Kovacevic said.

The Center for Serbian-Russian Cooperation was founded in Belgrade for the development, promotion and support for cooperation between Russia and Serbia in the economic, public diplomacy spheres, along with youth, sports and cultural policy.