#Milorad Dodik

[kepeslajoska]

Nem fizet az EU

[cgvijesti]

Dodik odlikovao Putina

Foto: N1 Predsjednik bh. entiteta RS Milorad Dodik danas je odlikovao ruskog predsjednika Vladimira Putina Ordenom Republike Srpske za “patriotizam i ljubav prema RS-u”. Svečanosti dodjele odlikovanja održava se danas u Banja Luci. “Putin je zaslužan za razvijanje i učvršćivanje saradnje i političkih i prijateljskih odnosa Republike Srpske i Rusije. Ima zasluga na polju javnih djelatnosti…

[politicoscope]

Milorad Dodik Becomes Serb Leader, Vows to Work With Russia

Milorad Dodik Becomes Serb Leader, Vows to Work With Russia

Separatist politician Milorad Dodik was sworn in Tuesday as president of Bosnia’s Serb-run part, pledging to pursue good ties with Russia, China and other like-minded countries. Milorad Dodik said during the inauguration ceremony Tuesday that Bosnian Serbs “have our Serbia, our Russia and our (other) partners in Hungary, China.” On the other hand, Dodik singled out the United Kingdom and Germany…

[mariacallous]

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, the only EU leader to openly back Donald Trump in his bid to reclaim the White House, was unsurprisingly among the first to congratulate the former president on Wednesday morning, even before the final results were in and rival Kamala Harris had conceded.

“The biggest comeback in US political history! Congratulations to President @realDonaldTrump on his enormous win. A much needed victory for the World!” Orban rejoiced on X (formerly Twitter).

Orban, who will be hosting European leaders in Budapest later this week, was swiftly joined by other illiberal leaders and fellow populists in Central and Southeast Europe, likewise unable to contain their glee at the return of Trump, who by midmorning Europe time had gained 266 electoral votes — just four shy from the 270 he needs to be elected the 47th US president.

Another close ally of Trump in Central Europe, Polish President Andrzej Duda, who met the former president in New York earlier this year, posted excitedly, complete with emojis: “Congratulations, Mr. President @realDonaldTrump! You made it happen! 👏👏👏🇵🇱🤝🇺🇸”.

In the Czech Republic, the former prime minister and Trump admirer Andrej Babis posted on X: “Sensational comeback @realDonaldTrump! He wasn’t stopped by an assassination attempt, nor by politically motivated lawsuits, nor by a systematic smear campaign in the media. American citizens have made it clear who they want as US President. I am confident that his victory will bring prosperity to the United States and peace to the world.”

More subdued comments came from Prime Minister Petr Fiala, who Babis is looking to oust in 2025, also on X: “Congratulations to Donald Trump on winning the presidential election. Our shared goal is to ensure that the relations between our countries remain at the highest level, despite changes in administration, and that we continue to develop them for the benefit of our citizens.”

Populist Slovak prime minister, Robert Fico, is currently on a state visit to China, though his ally, President Peter Pellegrini, offered his congratulations to Donald Trump on X. “I wish you and the American people all the success. Slovakia remains to be a strong and reliable Ally on NATO’s tested Eastern Flank living up to our shared commitments. I sincerely wish for a continuation of our good cooperation. Let’s make the transatlantic bond great again.”

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, who visited the White House during Trump’s first term in office that ended in 2020, welcomed Trump’s win on X. “Congratulations to Donald Trump on his victory. Together we face the serious challenges ahead. Serbia is committed to cooperation with the USA on stability, prosperity and peace,” Vucic wrote.

Turkey’s strongman leader, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said he wanted to congratulate his “great friend” Trump on his victory.

“In this new period that will begin with the election of the American people, I hope that Turkey-US relations will strengthen, that regional and global crises and wars, especially the Palestinian issue and the Russia-Ukraine war, will come to an end; I believe that more efforts will be made for a more just world,” Erdogan wrote on X.

The first to hail Trump’s win from Bosnia and Herzegovina was, unsurprisingly, the president of the Serb-dominated Republika Srpska entity, Milorad Dodik. “One of [the] most important electoral wins in recent history of the USA but the World as well! Congratulations, Donald Trump, 47th President of the United States of America!” Dodik wrote on his official X profile.

Late last year Dodik said that a victory for Trump would mean a “better geopolitical situation for Republika Srpska”, claiming that he regretted not declaring his entity’s independence from Bosnia and Herzegovina during Trump’s 2016-2020 presidency.

North Macedonia’s conservative prime minister, Hristijan Mickoski, sent his “heartfelt congratulations” to Trump on Wednesday morning. “This victory is a confirmation of the deep faith of the American people in the principles of freedom and democracy,” Mickoski, whose conservative, right-wing government came to power earlier this year, wrote on Facebook.

Mickoski and his cabinet are not among European leaders who fear a second Trump term could wreak havoc with transatlantic and international relations. His ruling VMRO-DPMNE party nurtures close ties with one of the biggest Trump endorsers on the continent, Hungary’s Orban, and over the summer Mickoski’s series of meetings with close Trump associates made his preference even more obvious.

“We look forward to further deepening our strong partnership and cooperation,” Mickoski added.

Warm words from the Balkans

The president of Montenegro, Jakov Milatovic, congratulated Trump on his victory. “Montenegro and the USA are friends and steadfast partners, united by shared goals and values, focused on advancing democracy, security, stability, and freedom. As NATO allies, we look forward to working very closely with Your administration on strengthening our friendship and deepening cooperation,” Milatovic wrote on X.

Montenegro’s first congratulatory message came earlier from the president of the parliament and leader of the pro-Serbian NOVA party Andrija Mandic. “I am sure that together we will build bridges of cooperation and preserve peace and stability in the Western Balkans,” Mandic wrote on X.

From Kosovo, which has deep ties with the US since the 1998-99 war, President Vjosa Osmani also congratulated Trump on his White House comeback.

“The US remains Kosovo’s steadfast partner and indispensable ally. I look forward to working with the new administration to further deepen our unique bond and strategic alliance,” Osmani said on X.

A similar message came from Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic. “Congratulations on a convincing victory and a second presidential term,” Plenkovic wrote on X. “I look forward to our cooperation and further progress in Croatian-American relations.”

Plenkovic’s domestic political rival, President Zoran Milanovic, hailed “the will of the majority of voters” in choosing Trump. He wrote on Facebook: “Since Croatian independence, the USA has been a partner and friend, I am convinced that this will remain the choice of the new president”.

Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama was also effusive in his congratulations: “I look forward to the great privilege of working with the 47th President to further enhance our partnership for peace, prosperity and further progress,” Rama wrote on X.

In Bulgaria, Boyko Borissov, leader of recent election-winners GERB and former prime minister, posted a photo of himself with Trump on social media, saying: “I’m ready for us to work together, again!”

Bulgarian President Rumen Radev also congratulated the Republican victor: “I am confident that our effective dialogue at the highest level will continue in the interest of the strategic partnership between Bulgaria and the USA,” Radev said.

Opposition party We Continue the Change’s Kiril Petkov described Trump’s comeback as US president as “a serious achievement”, while noting: “Of course, Bulgaria’s fate depends first and foremost on the will of the Bulgarians, but good cooperation with the US is crucial in the positioning of our country amid the changing geopolitical reality.”

In Greece, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis added his voice to the congratulatory messages from countries across the region. “Greece looks forward to further deepening the strategic partnership between our two countries and working together on important regional and global issues,” Mitsotakis wrote on X.

[mapsontheweb]

Greater Serbia

Proposed by Milorad Dodik, the leader of bosnian serbs, on October 28th, 2023.

[razistoricharka]

President of Republika Srpska Milorad Dodik this is your lawyer speaking please never stop posting this shit

[dakaneeee]

Alr you know what Im gonna ask for. You mentioned her in the srpska post so, Herze hcs?

Herze Head cannons time

Again 2 points:

1. Yes i do know when Tix made her she was probably referring to Herceg Bosna, and not Hercegovina as a whole. I am breaking that rule cause I am biased

2. Once again, I am from Hercegovina myself, and since Hercegovina has no important figure i can’t make the same Milorad Dodik joke in the last post

ANYWAY

1. Design wise nothing too interesting, I do imagine she has a lot of Sunspots tho

2. Also thick ass arms. Idk every woman from Herzegovina is always jacked

3. 166 cm for Herzegovina with Tijana Bošković existing is a spit to the face, she should be 180 cm at least

4. Thick brown hair, possibly wavy, though we barely see her hair down

5. Her “pre-conversion” name was Danica

6. She never converted actually, she remained Christian the entire Ottoman period

7. She read the bible to Ilija every night

8. Probably cut most of her hair off and pretended to be a male poturica (a serbian convert), where she went by the name Idriz

9. She wore mostly Turk-like clothing, probably stolen from a few Poturica-s she’s killed

10. Though she still wore the Herzegovinian hat, so it sent subliminal messaging of who she really was so Ilija and Montenegro didn’t have a hard time recognizing her in disguise

11. Once the Ottomans figured out her gimmick they degradingly called her Idriza, which is where her current name originates from

12. Was forcefully married to Enis afterwards

13. She refused to take his last name, the only reason people think she took it is from superficial assumption

14. I don’t imagine her being related to Croatia, she was nicknamed “Serbian Sparta” after all

15. However I di imagine Herzegovina going to Croatia for help, only for him to take off the Herzegovinian hat off of her. Symbolically representing Croats trying to strip away Herzegovinians of their culture as they came to Dalmatia for help.

16. He also tried to convert her, didn’t work at first but it took a toll on her

17. Best Bonding time with Ilija was the Herzegovinian uprising

18. She will feel the same way later in 1993 when the serbs and croats collaborated against the Muslims one more time

19. Sadly, they probably drifted apart as he grew up and became his own thing

20. Also a tarp carrier, once again easy weapon holding but it’s her holding onto her past

21. Had a meaningful connection with Zeta (Montenegro) at the time of the serbian empire, which is where their strong historical bond started

22. “Hladno krvna” as in cold blooded in serbian. Could actually be about her being very cold, but also about her getting physically cold easily

23. Ambiguously calls herself “Christian” and doesn’t specify if she’s Catholic or Orthodox

24. Celebrates Orthodox Christmas with Srpska, Monte and Serbia every time lmfao

25. Serbian new years with Srpska only though

26. I imagine the house of BiH (as in Bosnia, Herzegovina and Srpska) is somewhere outside of Sarajevo, though she probably has a smaller house in Gacko or Trebinje where she goes to so she can feel reconnected to her rural identity

27. Very specifically she has a house with a chimney, weird preference but ok

28. She kept a relationship with Montenegro for the most time during the Ottoman period, the two kind of depending on each other most of the time.

29. Turkish coffee 4 times a day, she isn’t addicted to caffeine she’s just a mom from the area

30. Goran Bregović fan, probably cause she’s also half Croatian and half Serbian

31. Despite not liking the cold, she’d rather be in a freezing river than a warm sea

32. Probably won the cross on Bogojavljenje at least once

33. Also has a very obnoxious Herzegovinian accent, except she throws in Croatian words and it sounds even worse than whatever alien language Ilija is speaking

34. Knows the whole Gorski Vijenac book by memory

35. She told Enis their marriage reminds her of the Hasanaginica story and he crossed his arms and looked at her disapprovingly for the rest of the evening

36. She has a Red Brojanica, the silver cross on the red rope is kind of a nudge to Zahumlje / Duchy of st. Sava in the past

Anyways Herze doodle to get the idea

[otthonzulles]

....külpolitikád:

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan – török elnök,

Ilham Aliyev – azerbajdzsáni elnök,

Savkat Mirzijojev – üzbég elnök,

Tamím bin Hamad ál-Száni – katari emír,

Milorad Dodik – a Boszniai Szerb Köztársaság elnöke,

Aleksandar Vučić – szerb elnök,

Andrej Babiš – volt cseh kormányfő,

Sebastian Kurz – volt osztrák kancellár,

Szadir Zsaparov – kirgiz államfő,

Serdar Berdimuhamedow – türkmén államfő, és

Rusztam Minnyihanov – a Tatár Köztársaság vezetője.

[maturemenoftvandfilms]

You should check out other European grandpa politicians as well. Some really sexy ones include Milorad Dodik, Radimir Cacik and Viktor Orban.

I'll check them out.

[thoughtlessarse]

Languages: Deutsch

Bosnian Serb lawmakers on Thursday (18 April) adopted a report denying that the killing of 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica during the Bosnian war constituted genocide, and thousands of Serbs later protested against a United Nation’s resolution to commemorate the atrocity. The massacre in 1995, which happened in the week after the UN safe zone of Srebrenica was attacked by Bosnian Serb forces, was seen as Europe’s worst atrocity since World War Two, and international courts have ruled it constituted genocide. The parliamentary step came as Serbia and Bosnia’s autonomous Serb Republic campaign against a resolution to commemorate the Srebrenica genocide that is being debated in the United Nations and should be voted on in the General Assembly in early May. After the vote in the Serb Republic’s parliament, thousands of people from across the region joined a protest against the resolution organised by the ruling coalition in the Serb Republic’s de facto capital of Banja Luka. Milorad Dodik, the region´s nationalist president, said that the Bosnian Serb army operation in Srebrenica was a “big mistake”. “It was a crime but it was not a genocide,” Dodik told supporters who were applauding and waving Serb flags. He called on Muslim Bosniaks to pull back their support for the resolution, saying that otherwise the Serbs will not live with them in the same state.

continue reading

[kepeslajoska]

Kép Milorad Dodik videójából

[cgvijesti]

SAD zaprijetile Dodiku

Predsjednik Republike Srpske Milorad Dodik dobio je novo upozorenje američke diplomatije da Vašington neće tolerisati njegovu secesionističku retoriku i prijetnje opstanku BiH. Dodik danas je, prije inaugurisanja za entitetskog predsjednika kazao da ukoliko neko “dirne imovinu” ovog BiH entiteta predložiće otcjepljenje od države, što je izazvalo aplauz prisutnih”.  Dodik je zaprijetio kako će…

[usafphantom2]

USAF F-16 fighters train in Bosnia on alert against "separatist activity"

Fernando Valduga By Fernando Valduga 01/11/2024 - 16:00 in Military, War Zones

Two U.S. Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcons conducted bilateral air-to-ground training with joint terminal attack controllers (JTACs) from the U.S. Special Operations Command in Europe and the Bosnia and Herzegovina Armed Forces JTACs near Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina, on January 8, 2024.

This bilateral formation is an example of advanced cooperation between the military that contributes to peace and security in the Western Balkans and throughout Europe. It is also a show of force aimed at deterring the "separatist activity" of Bosnian Serbs that is in disagreement with the U.S.-mediated peace agreements, the U.S. government said.

The exercise aimed to support America's commitment to Bosnia's territorial integrity, amid growing tensions inflamed by Bosnian Serb nationalist leader Milorad Dodik, whom Russia supports.

January 9 is celebrated as Republika Srpska Day by Bosnian Serbs and marks the anniversary of the declaration of independence that started the conflict in Bosnia in 1992, which killed more than 100,000 people and led to ethnic cleansing and the massacre of civilians.

“Joint military events like this are a demonstration of the U.S.' lasting partnership with the Bosnia and Herzegovina Armed Forces,” said U.S. Air Force Lieutenant General Steven L. Basham, deputy commander of the U.S. European Command.

"American support for the Armed Forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina is inflexible, forged over years of close cooperation. For twenty years, the Armed Forces of our two countries maintained a remarkable and robust military relationship between the military," added Basham. "The United States continues to provide assistance that will help its armed forces modernize and become a contributor to security, both regionally and globally.”

The training was part of the routine efforts of U.S. forces to exchange tactics, techniques and procedures with the forces of partner countries.

The mission of the F-16 fighters assigned to the 31ª Fighter Wing of Aviano Air Base, Italy, was supported by a KC-135 Stratotanker from the 100ª Air Refueling Wing, from the RAF Base in Mildenhall, United Kingdom, which provided air refueling for the F-16s and contributed to fulfilling all training objectives.

The U.S. Department of Defense and the Bosnian and Herzegovina Armed Forces share a common goal of contributing to continued stability in the region and are natural partners in their global commitment to global security.

In the 1990s, NATO intervened with military force, first through the beginning of Operation Deny Flight, which aimed to impose a United Nations no-fly zone during the conflict in the Balkans, and later Operation Deliberate Force, an air campaign against the Bosnian Serbian Army. In 1995, the US mediated the Dayton Agreements, agreed at Wright-Patterson Air Base, Ohio, with Republika Srpska, of a Serbian majority, and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, of Bosnian and Croatian majority, agreeing to peace as a single state.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg warned in November that the alliance was “concerned about secessionist and divisionist rhetoric, as well as evil foreign interference, including Russia”.

After the celebration of Republika Srpska Day on January 9, the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo condemned the actions.

Soldiers of the U.S. Special Operations Command in Europe and joint terminal attack controllers of the Armed Forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) remain united during a bilateral training event at BiH on January 8, 2024. (Photo: U.S Army / Sgt. Alejandro Lucero)

“The United States has acted to address anti-Dayton actions like this in the past and will not hesitate to do so again in the future,” the U.S. Embassy said in a statement on January 9.

EUCOM said that the Air Force exercise held on January 8 aimed to strengthen peace in the Balkans.

Tags: Military AviationF-16 Fighting FalconNATO - North Atlantic Treaty OrganizationUSAF - United States Air Force / U.S. Air ForceWar Zones

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Fernando Valduga

Fernando Valduga

Aviation photographer and pilot since 1992, he has participated in several events and air operations, such as Cruzex, AirVenture, Dayton Airshow and FIDAE. He has works published in specialized aviation magazines in Brazil and abroad. He uses Canon equipment during his photographic work in the world of aviation.

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[mariacallous]

As multiple crises flare, and as her Sept. 10 debate with former U.S. President Donald Trump approaches, Vice President Kamala Harris needs to anticipate a potential swipe over the Biden administration’s Balkans record. The former president has proudly cited his own record in the region, and Trump’s former Balkans special envoy, Richard Grenell, has trolled Harris on her alleged ignorance of the region. And the truth is that the situation across the Balkans, with barely an exception, has only worsened on U.S. President Joe Biden’s watch.

At a deeper level, confronting Biden’s struggles in the Balkans can help Harris to urgently refine her own foreign-policy convictions. The essential international task for any president is to wield U.S. power to advance U.S. interests.

The Biden administration’s inability to do so in the Balkans—where the West holds strategic leverage—offers a bracing, universal lesson. Discarding Biden’s core democratic principles, his State Department has “cozied up”—to use Harris’s term—to an autocrat, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic. Just like Trump, Biden officials have failed to grasp the unavoidable price of cutting deals with a strongman: weakness.

Emboldened by U.S. supplication, Vucic has openly revived the Greater Serbian nationalist project that led Yugoslavia to war three decades ago. Now he has applied that philosophy to his relations with Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, and Montenegro. Both directly and indirectly, Serbia has consistently undermined each country’s sovereignty, functionality, and Euro-Atlantic aspirations.

An armed Serbian plot hatched last September in the northern Kosovo town of Banjska—near where U.S. troops are deployed—sought to divide the country by force. This brazen violation of Belgrade’s peace terms with NATO could only have been executed with support from Serbian officials, none of whom have been held to account.

A U.S. administration that regularly slaps sanctions around the region has barely managed to sanction any Serbian officials. Snubbing Washington, Vucic installed two of the few U.S.-sanctioned figures in the newest Serbian government. One of them—Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandar Vulin, a notorious former intelligence chief and Kremlin acolyte, —met with Russian President Vladimir Putin again on Sept. 4, declaring that “Serbia is Russia’s ally” and adding that “under Aleksandar Vucic’s leadership, Serbia would never join NATO, nor would it impose sanctions on the Russian Federation.”

Vucic’s allies and rivals alike see the disparity in the U.S. posture toward Belgrade and act accordingly. In a visit to Sarajevo in late August, CIA Director William Burns confronted the “worrying secessionist rhetoric and actions” of Milorad Dodik, the pro-Russian president and government of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Serb entity. For much of its tenure, the Biden administration has vainly appealed to Vucic to restrain Dodik, ignoring their shared interest in Bosnia’s demise.

In June, Vucic hosted Dodik and other nationalists in Belgrade at the openly irredentist “All Serbian Assembly.” In July, the pro-Serbian speaker of the Montenegro Parliament Andrea Mandic, orchestrated a resolution calculated to anger Croatia, an Adriatic neighbor that had fully reconciled with its onetime enemy. Executed at Serbian behest, the resolution instantly casts a shadow over Montenegro’s path to the European Union by inviting obstacles from Zagreb, which is an EU member. Like Putin, Vucic is threatened by the EU aspirations of a smaller, supposedly artificial neighbor, Montenegro, which Belgrade seeks to subjugate.

The most serious deterioration is in Kosovo, where Prime Minister Albin Kurti has infuriated Western diplomats with a series of provocative moves in the Serb-predominant north of the country. Determined to finally assert Kosovo’s sovereignty over legacy Serbian institutions, Kurti’s unilateral actions risk undoing his country’s internationally designed constitution, which guarantees a secure place for minority Serbs.

Already deflated after the Banjska fiasco, Kosovo Serbs are near the point of giving up on life in Kosovo—a result that will play into Serbian and Russian designs to undermine the Western, multiethnic order in the region.

Despite U.S. and EU sanctions, Kurti has continued his “instrumentalization” of Kosovo’s police in the north after the disastrous decision by Belgrade loyalists to march Serbs out of the Kosovo police force and other institutions in November 2022. As Grenell has noted, sharp U.S. State Department condemnations of Kurti’s actions have fallen on deaf ears.

Grenell and Biden officials are both missing the point. Kurti continues his irresponsible populism for one, counterintuitive reason: defiance of the U.S. resonates with the most pro-U.S. public in the world, Kosovar Albanians. Citizens of Kosovo, as well as many in North Macedonia and Montenegro, see Kurti as the only figure standing up to Belgrade, which has suffered no penalty for its acts or omissions that led to violent confrontation with NATO peacekeepers.

Mounting U.S. and European fury at Kurti—astride mounting U.S., French, and German investment in Serbia—only exacerbates the problem. Galvanized by Washington’s transactional leadership, French President Emmanuel Macron visited Belgrade at the end of August, sealing the sale of French fighter jets and signing an array of agreements, including in nuclear energy. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz arrived to fanfare in July, overseeing the signing of an EU-Serbian agreement on critical raw materials that will advance the long-stalled mining of lithium in Serbia’s Jadar Valley.

Channeling Washington, Paris insists that the arms package—which comes on top of a yearslong, disturbing weapons acquisition spree by Belgrade—will “anchor Serbia in the West.”

To the contrary, a decade of Serbian foot-dragging on EU reform has proved that Aleksandar Vucic’s ruling party is anchored in autocratic exploitation, strengthening anti-democratic rule at home, and weakening democratic neighbors in Belgrade’s own neighborhood. With his position increasingly secure, Vucic bluntly told Macron during their recent meeting that “joining the Western sanctions [on Russia] is not an option.”

Against this phlegmatic backdrop, the U.S.-backed, EU-led dialogue between Serbia and Kosovo is moribund. Neither Vucic nor Kurti will move forward with the unsigned normalization “accord” that Washington and Brussels insist both sides accepted last year. Eliminating any ambiguity, former Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic formally notified Brussels in December 2023 that Belgrade does not consider the U.S.-EU-mediated accord to be legally binding.

The full-scale invasion of Ukraine that Putin launched in February 2022 handed Washington another golden opportunity to challenge Vucic’s duplicitous so-called balance between Serbia’s phony EU candidacy and his real friendships with the autocrats in Moscow, Beijing, and Budapest. Overwhelmed by this seismic geopolitical event, Belgrade was terrified that Washington, along with leading European capitals, would finally call Vucic’s bluff, demanding the same fidelity to the EU position on the invasion that Serbia’s fellow candidates to the bloc had shown.

Instead, the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade immediately lauded Serbia’s half-measures. By May 2022, with his confidence restored, Vucic had signed an in-your-face, three-year gas deal with Putin. In September 2022, Vucic embarrassed U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Under-Secretary of State Victoria Nuland at the United Nations, engineering the high-profile signing of a foreign-policy pact with Russia shortly after meeting the two senior U.S. officials.

The next month, Serbia signed an agreement with Hungary to build a pipeline to deliver Russian oil to Serbia, breaking Vucic’s energy commitments to Biden just as he had done to Trump. And in November, Russian state-controlled TV network Russia Today announced that it would launch its website in Serbia, in direct defiance of EU sanctions.

After initially calling for Belgrade to impose sanctions on Russia, U.S. Ambassador to Serbia Christopher Hill has now pronounced the U.S. government “pleased with the growing forms of cooperation between Serbia and Ukraine.”

No one in Washington should be pleased with the shortsighted, unambitious, and unnecessary trade of democratic values for autocratic disorder. Had Vucic finally been confronted with the need to give up his charade, Belgrade may have voluntarily spread Serbian military munitions to the Ukrainian battlefield without spreading Russian political ammunition throughout the region.

The proof: to this day, the Kremlin has inflicted no price on Belgrade for arming Moscow’s mortal enemy in Kyiv—not even verbal condemnation. Putin’s biggest potential threat to Vucic— ceasing Moscow’s ritual opposition to Kosovo’s membership in the U.N.—would be self-defeating. The Russian president dreams of trading Kosovo for Crimea and other Ukrainian territory in a deal at the U.N. Security Council that is sanctioned by Washington.

In short, Putin has limited options in the Balkans—which means that so does Vucic.

Free from either Russian or Western pressure, Vucic has millions of reasons to continue the highly lucrative, low-risk cash flow from arms sales that go to Ukraine. Indeed, the entire premise that Belgrade needs to be weaned from its traditional friendship with Moscow is flawed. Vucic’s alignment is ideological and voluntary, as proven by his enthusiastic alignment with non-Slavic autocrats in Beijing and Budapest. It was no coincidence that on his May European tour, Chinese President Xi Jin Ping spent most of his time in Hungary and Serbia. Flouting EU policy on Iran, Belgrade last week vowed to “expand bilateral relations” with Tehran, the strategic partner of both Beijing and Moscow. Domestically, the Serbian government enjoys near total dominance of the media narrative in the country (and sizable, poisonous influence in the wider region.)

Similarly, Belgrade’s oft-cited support for pro-Ukraine declarations and U.N. General Assembly resolutions over the war have little do with solidarity with Ukraine and everything to do with advancing Serbia’s regional agenda. As senior officials, including Vucic, have admitted, Kosovo—not Ukraine—is the reason for Belgrade’s steadfast, vocal support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

If she wants to become the U.S. president, Harris needs to understand now the peril of discarding core values just because standing up to autocrats seems like too much work. “A Europe that is whole, free, and at peace” is a stated U.S. strategic objective, not a slogan. Leaving the Balkans as a deteriorating mess is a strategic victory for the United States’ adversaries.