Presidential candidate Aleksandar Vucic, Serbian Prime Minister and leader of the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) speaks and gestures during a pre-election rally in Belgrade, Serbia, Friday, March 24, 2017. Serbia's populist prime minister says he will pay an official visit to Russian President Vladimir Putin, the trip apparently intended to boost his bid for the Serbian presidency. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic)
Republished March 25, 2017 - 11:49 AM
Original Publication Date March 25, 2017 - 10:30 AM
BELGRADE, Serbia - Serbia's populist prime minister said Saturday he will pay an official visit to Russian President Vladimir Putin, a trip apparently designed to boost his bid for the Serbian presidency.
The former ultranationalist now self-declared pro-EU reformer, Aleksandar Vucic, has been playing a balancing act between the West and Russia over the future of Serbia.
Serbian media said that during Vucic's visit to Moscow on Monday he will try finalize a deal with Putin over a delivery of six MiG-29 fighter jets ahead of the April 2 presidential vote in Serbia. Vucic hopes to win enough votes then to avoid a runoff two weeks later.
Although Serbia is a member of a NATO outreach program, the country has lately been boosting its military co-operation with Russia. That has raised alarms in neighbouring Croatia and Bosnia after wars with Serbia in the Balkans in the 1990s.
Serbia has turned mostly anti-Western and pro-Russian after a NATO military intervention 18 years ago that ended with its former ethnic-Albanian province of Kosovo declaring independence in 2008.
Russia has become a factor in a number of elections in other countries.
U.S. intelligence agencies say that Russian hackers intervened in the 2016 U.S. election.
Putin also made his preferences clear in the upcoming French presidential election by hosting far-right candidate Marine Le Pen at the Kremlin on Friday.
And in Montenegro, prosecutors have accused Russia and its secret service operatives of plotting an election-day coup attempt that included plans to kill the country's former prime minister. The Kremlin has denied involvement in the alleged plot.
News from © The Associated Press, 2017