'It's unthinkable': Lavrov couldn't get into Serbia as neighboring countries closed their airspace

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was forced to cancel a two-day visit to Belgrade after Montenegro, Bulgaria and North Macedonia refused to let his plane through their airspace on June 5. Lavrov called the incident unthinkable, reports with the BBC.

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The visit of the Russian Foreign Minister to Serbia was scheduled for June 6-7.

“Just today, an hour ago, the countries surrounding Serbia closed the communication channel, not allowing Sergei Lavrov’s flight, which was heading to Serbia, to fly over. The Russian delegation was supposed to arrive in Belgrade for negotiations. EU and NATO member countries have closed their airspace and closed another communication channel,” said Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova on the evening of June 5 on the Italian TV channel La7.

According to the head of the Serbian government, Ana Brnabic, negotiations with the Balkan neighbors on the situation with Lavrov are conducted personally by the country's President Aleksandar Vučić.

“It is truly incredible that the situation in Europe and in the world is such that the president of one country should deal with such things as the logistics of the flight of the foreign minister of another country, which determines whether he gets there or not,” Brnabic commented on the situation on Serbian television (quote from Interfax).

On Monday, Lavrov gave a press conference at which he said that he had invited Serbian Foreign Minister Nikola Selakovic to visit Russia in the near future, and called the cancellation of his visit to the country “deprivation of a sovereign state’s right to carry out foreign policy.”

“Of course, the unthinkable happened,” Lavrov said. — Serbia’s international activities in the Russian direction have been blocked. This is another very clear and instructive demonstration of how far NATO and the EU can go in using the most base methods of influence on those who are guided by national interests and are not ready to sacrifice their principles for the sake of the very rules that the West imposes in place of international law.”

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According to Lavrov, “things are very bad in the West” if they perceive the visit of the Russian Foreign Minister to Serbia “as almost a threat on a universal scale.”

Almost all EU countries and the UK closed the skies to Russian aircraft shortly after Russia's invasion of Ukraine on February 24.

North Macedonia and Montenegro are not part of the EU, but are members of NATO and have joined European sanctions against Russia.

Serbia is one of Russia's few allies in Europe. It is not a member of NATO and does not support sanctions against Moscow, but since 2012 it has had the official status of a candidate country for EU membership.

At the same time, Serbia supports the territorial integrity of Ukraine, and after the outbreak of the war, Belgrade supported a UN resolution condemning Moscow.

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In early March, crowded rallies were held in Belgrade in support of Russia's actions in Ukraine.
Serbia is almost completely dependent on Russian gas, but its loyalty to Moscow is also due to the fact that the Russian authorities support Belgrade in not recognizing Kosovo's independence.

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