West trying to minimize Serbs’ communication with Russia — Dodik

MOSCOW, June 13. /TASS/. The West is trying to cut off any of Serbs’ communication with Russia and both NATO and the European Union pursue the same goal, Milorad Dodik, leader of the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats, the leading political party in Republika Srpska, one of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s entities, said in an interview with TASS.

"The first aspect is that the European Union has literally encircled Serbia and Republika Srpska. Croatia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece and Italy are all NATO member states and members of the European Union," Dodik said.

"At the same time, they are trying to draw Montenegro and Albania into the European Union. This process will apparently accelerate. Thus, we turn into an isolated island, which they can easily cut off from any communication," he said.

"This refers not only to air traffic. This is where NATO and the European Union pursue the same goal," Dodik pointed out.

The Serbs are emotionally bound with Russia, beyond any doubt, he said.

"We are fraternal peoples and we have the same roots. However, they do not like that. They see our affinity with the Russians and that is why they are persistently trying to abolish both Serbia and Republika Srpska and thus resolve the issue of the alleged Russian influence," the politician pointed out.

As Dodik believes, "integration into the European Union won’t benefit our Serbian people." "Another thing is that some circumstances force us to work on keeping open the borders, maintaining economic cooperation with the European Union and so on."

"Today we cannot trade with Russia so actively because transit routes run across the territory of the European Union and turn out to be blocked by the Europeans on both sides," Dodik said.

The Serbs should take all these factors into account and act pragmatically, he said.

"But Europe itself won’t be able to give up trade with Russia. They always talk about banning Russian crude oil, for example," the politician pointed out.

"But the prices of energy products are on the rise all the time, I can see that myself," he concluded.