BELGRADE, Yugoslavia -- A shift in Russian policy toward Serbia has become increasingly apparent since president-elect Vladimir Putin took the helm at the Kremlin.
During his presidential campaign, observers in Belgrade and Moscow noticed that Putin never mentioned the Balkans or Serbia.Goran Svilanovic, president of the Civic Alliance of Serbia notes that "shortly before the start of the election campaign, the Russian Embassy distributed Putin's electoral manifesto to all the political parties in Serbia. It was quite clear from this document that Moscow has no intention of abandoning its policy of cooperation with the West."
Following Putin's election, the Russian daily newspaper Kommersant wrote that Moscow had made a conscious decision to distance itself from the "hated" Yugoslav president. Russia, according to Kommersant, "has no wish to support the regime in Belgrade,"
According to sources close to high-ranking officials in the Yugoslav Army, Russia has recently broken off its military and technical agreement with Serbia. The agreement, signed by Russian Defense Minister Igor Sergeev and his Yugoslav counterpart, Pavle Bulatov, was aimed at restructuring and modernizing the Yugoslav forces. Although these sources refused to comment further about the details of the agreement, they stressed that Russia had unilaterally put the project on ice.
Meanwhile, an agreement for Russia to supply Serbia with natural gas has run into trouble. The Russian supplier, Gasprom, cut deliveries by one-third, without first informing Belgrade.
Soon after the reduction in gas supplies, Russia' Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov met with Borislav Milosevic, the Yugoslav ambassador in Moscow and brother of President Slobodan Milosevic. Ivanov called upon the Yugoslav Federation to show greater flexibility toward the international community in solving the Kosovo problem.
Ivanov also told Milosevic that Russia supports the UN proposals to give Kosovo greater autonomy within the federation and said that Belgrade should play a leading role in the process of stabilizing the Balkan region.
Sources in Moscow say that, during the Contact Group summit earlier this month, Russia expressed solidarity with the West in opposing Serbian attempts to destabilize Montenegro. Moscow roundly condemned the Serbian blockade of Montenegro, stating that Belgrade's policies had served to aggravate an already complicated situation.
A Serbian government official, who declined to be identified, said that "Igor Ivanov's behavior at the meeting with Bora Milosevic, compounded by problems with the gas supply and Russia's support of Montenegro, have come as a real shock to Belgrade."
An even bigger shock occurred when Moscow invited Vuk Draskovic, the leader of a major opposition party in Serbia, to visit the Kremlin. Draskovic was the first Serbian politician to visit the Russian Federation following Putin's election victory.
An opposition party spokesman said Draskovic met with officials from the Russian foreign ministry to discuss early elections in Serbia, Kosovo and Montenegro, as well as the lifting of sanctions against the Yugoslav Federation.
Belgrade was quick to react to Moscow's diplomatic maneuverings.
Milutin Stojkovic, president of the defense committee and a senior member of the ruling Socialist Party of Serbia, accused the Russian foreign minister of pandering to the U.S. government.
"Ivanov's diplomacy represents nothing more than attempts to appease American . . . interests," Stojkovic recently told a visiting delegation of Russian Duma deputies in Belgrade.
Milosevic has a long history of backing the losing side in Russian politics. During the attempted coup against Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991, Belgrade voiced open support for the rebels who wanted to rebuild the Soviet empire.
Then Milosevic decided to back the presidential campaign of Russian ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky, hoping that his election would guarantee Serbia a nuclear arsenal of its own. At the time, the Serbian media buzzed with rumors of a secret weapon that Zhirinovsky had allegedly presented to the government.
Later, Belgrade championed the Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov when he challenged former president Boris Yeltsin in the 1996 elections.
Whatever Putin's motives in distancing himself from the current Serbian leadership, the move is likely to force Belgrade to turn toward China and other nations in the Far East as it looks for political and economic allies.
Daniel Sunter, a journalist with the VIP agency in Belgrade, also writes for the Institute for War & Peace Reporting, a London-based independent media organization. Readers may write to the author in care of Global Beat Syndicate, 418 Lafayette Street, Suite 554, New York, NY 10003, or visit its Web site at: http://www.nyu.edu/globalbeat/syndicate. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.