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News from Serbia and Balkans
BIG WIN in Maryland Primary!
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RFE/RL's Balkan Service
74-94 minutes
The head of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Porfirije (left), and Montenegrin Prime Minister Dritan Abazovic meet in June.
Montenegrin Prime Minister Dritan Abazovic has signed a basic agreement on relations between the government in Podgorica and the Serbian Orthodox Church.
Abazovic signed the agreement, which covers sensitive relations between the government and the church, after more than four hours of discussions on July 8. Thirteen ministers voted for the adoption of the agreement, five voted against, and three were absent.
Abazovic negotiated the agreement with Serbian Orthodox Patriarch Porfirije. A draft of the agreement was published last week after which the patriarch said the new agreement would mark a "crowning" of the normalization of relations between Montenegro and his church.
Some protests broke out in Podgorica after Abazovic's announcement alongside the Serbian patriarch.
Deputy Prime Minister Rasko Konjevic said on July 8 that, with the adoption of the basic agreement, Abazovic would lose the parliamentary majority that has supported his government so far.
"The contract is not in accordance with the constitution, and the preamble is not in accordance with historical facts," Konjevic said. "I am informing you that the government has lost its legitimacy, and after consultations a request will be submitted to shorten the mandate of the assembly -- that is, to hold extraordinary elections."
He asserted that the text was not properly adopted because 13 votes was not a two-thirds majority of the 21 ministers.
Abazovic disputed Konjevic's statement but said a new vote could be held because three ministers were absent when the vote took place.
The Serbian Orthodox Church has considerable influence in Montenegro and within the ruling coalition. A majority of Montenegrins worship under the auspices of the Serbian Orthodox Church, which has an arm based in Cetinje called the Metropolitanate of Montenegro and the Littoral.
The basic agreement outlines the obligations of the state and institutions toward the church.
It recognizes Serbian Orthodox subjectivity six centuries further back than the church is afforded in Serbia itself, extends extraterritoriality of religious buildings, opens the possibility of religious teaching in public schools, and gives the church legal status that in some areas is equal to state institutions.
Critics have complained about the criteria it sets for settling registration disputes over property. The church controls hundreds of properties throughout Montenegro.
Montenegro's largest ruling party, the Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS), and the Social Democrats (SDP) criticized a draft of the basic agreement published on June 28 as overly generous toward the Serbian church.
The basic agreement must now be sent to the Synod of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Belgrade, which must also accept it.
6-7 minutes
Foreign Intelligence Service of Russia's Chief, Sergey Naryshkin, assessed that Polish plans to establish control over western Ukraine are dangerous for Europe.
Source: B92 Friday, July 8, 2022 | 17:05
EPA-EFE/ROMAN PILIPEY
As he said, that would open Pandora's box and then it would not be good for anyone.
"It's definitely dangerous. It's dangerous for Ukraine, it's dangerous for all of Europe. The thing is that on the European continent there are quite a few points where neighbors are silently claiming the territory of neighboring countries," Naryshkin told reporters after a meeting with the leadership of the KGB of Belarus.
As reported by Sputnik, according to his words, the Foreign Intelligence Service of Russia is carefully monitoring what is happening.
"If Poland opens that Pandora's box, it will not be good for anyone. It is an essential way to make the situation on the European continent even more difficult and, of course, to reduce the level of international security," said Naryshkin.
He warned last week that the Polish leadership is analyzing scenarios for the de facto partition of Ukraine and that the Polish authorities are convinced that the U.S. and Great Britain will be forced to support the plan for the partition of Ukraine.
Naryshkin previously spoke about Poland's attempt to repeat the historic "agreement" after the end of the First World War, when the collective West, embodied in the Entente powers, recognized Warsaw's right to first occupy part of Ukraine to protect the population from the "Bolshevik danger" and then to include those territories in the composition of the Polish state.
Naryshkin also assessed that, after the summit that NATO recently held in Madrid, it became clear that NATO is waging a hybrid war against Russia and Belarus.
"During the NATO summit in Madrid, which was held recently, it can be said that the masks fell off. It is obvious to us that the NATO bloc is waging a hybrid war against both Russia and our ally - Belarus," said Naryshkin.
RT
4-5 minutes
By pressuring Belgrade to sanction Moscow, Western states are seeking to whitewash their own sins, the interior minister says
It is not in Serbia's interests to reduce cooperation with Russia and to "absolve" the West of its crimes, the interior minister says
Serbia says it is not interested in diminishing its "closeness and cooperation" with Moscow, adding that by trying to force Belgrade to impose sanctions on Russia, the West simply seeks to "absolve" itself from its own crimes.
In an interview with the newspaper Novosti published on Sunday, Interior Minister Aleksandar Vulin said that throughout history, Serbs have always been "expected to do something for others" and to neglect their own interests.
"It is not in Serbia's interest to participate in the conflicts of the greats, and it is not in Serbia's interest to diminish the closeness and cooperation with Russia and its leadership," the minister said.
He claimed that when Western countries ask Serbia to impose sanctions on Russia, they know it would not mean much for Russia from an economic perspective, but would serve as a significant moral blow.
"Those who bombed us know that the moral greatness of Serbia is disproportionate to its firepower, and that is why they need that little tormented Serbia, that brave victim, to be with them," he said.
In his opinion, the US and its allies "have everything but morals" and so they want Serbia "to absolve them of the crimes they have committed and to absolve them of the sins of violating international law."
"Unlike Western admirers of the right to vote and democracy, despotic Russia and China have never asked us to impose sanctions on the EU or US and accept their choice as our own," Vulin said, adding that any "anti-Russian hysteria is always anti-Serbian."
The minister also noted that his country does not want Russia to be defeated in Ukraine.
"The defeat of Russia would be felt with all its might in all positions of Serbia, as it always has been," he said.
Vulin hailed Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic for "showing strength that exceeds the position of the president of a small country" in opposing the sanctions on Russia.
"Vucic is not a little Russian, he is a great Serb," he added.
The US, EU, UK, and many other countries view Russia's military operation in Ukraine as an act of unprovoked aggression and responded by imposing sweeping sanctions on Moscow.
On Friday, at a press conference with the Serbian president, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Serbia must follow the EU's lead in sanctioning Russia, and recognize the breakaway province of Kosovo as an independent state if it hopes to join the bloc someday.
Vucic reiterated that sanctioning Russia would be difficult for Belgrade. Earlier this week, he told Serbian TV that the EU's oil embargo has already cost $600 million in higher prices.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that the sanctions have backfired on the West, citing the inflation and shortages that the US and EU governments are now trying to blame on Moscow. The following day, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the sanctions have indeed made a "huge difference to food and energy prices" amid record-setting inflation.
Larry Elliott
6-7 minutes
It is now three months since the west launched its economic war against Russia, and it is not going according to plan. On the contrary, things are going very badly indeed.
Sanctions were imposed on Vladimir Putin not because they were considered the best option, but because they were better than the other two available courses of action: doing nothing or getting involved militarily.
The first set of economic measures were introduced immediately after the invasion, when it was assumed Ukraine would capitulate within days. That didn't happen, with the result that sanctions – while still incomplete – have gradually been intensified.
There is, though, no immediate sign of Russia pulling out of Ukraine and that's hardly surprising, because the sanctions have had the perverse effect of driving up the cost of Russia's oil and gas exports, massively boosting its trade balance and financing its war effort. In the first four months of 2022, Putin could boast a current account surplus of $96bn (£76bn) – more than treble the figure for the same period of 2021.
When the EU announced its partial ban on Russian oil exports earlier this week, the cost of crude oil on the global markets rose, providing the Kremlin with another financial windfall. Russia is finding no difficulty finding alternative markets for its energy, with exports of oil and gas to China in April up more than 50% year on year.
That's not to say the sanctions are pain-free for Russia. The International Monetary Fund estimates the economy will shrink by 8.5% this year as imports from the west collapse. Russia has stockpiles of goods essential to keep its economy going, but over time they will be used up.
But Europe is only gradually weaning itself off its dependency on Russian energy, and so an immediate financial crisis for Putin has been averted. The rouble – courtesy of capital controls and a healthy trade surplus – is strong. The Kremlin has time to find alternative sources of spare parts and components from countries willing to circumvent western sanctions.
When the global movers and shakers met in Davos last week, the public message was condemnation of Russian aggression and renewed commitment to stand solidly behind Ukraine. But privately, there was concern about the economic costs of a prolonged war.
These concerns are entirely justified. Russia's invasion of Ukraine has given an added boost to already strong price pressures. The UK's annual inflation rate stands at 9% – its highest in 40 years – petrol prices have hit a record high and the energy price cap is expected to increase by £700-800 a year in October. Rishi Sunak's latest support package to cope with the cost-of-living crisis was the third from the chancellor in four months – and there will be more to come later in the year.
As a result of the war, western economies face a period of slow or negative growth and rising inflation – a return to the stagflation of the 1970s. Central banks – including the Bank of England – feel they have to respond to near double-digit inflation by raising interest rates. Unemployment is set to rise. Other European countries face the same problems, if not more so, since most of them are more dependent on Russian gas than is the UK.
The problems facing the world's poorer countries are of a different order of magnitude. For some of them the issue is not stagflation, but starvation, as a result of wheat supplies from Ukraine's Black Sea ports being blocked.
As David Beasley, the executive director of the World Food Programme put it: "Right now, Ukraine's grain silos are full. At the same time, 44 million people around the world are marching towards starvation."
In every multilateral organisation – the IMF, the World Bank, the World Trade Organization and the United Nations – fears are growing of a humanitarian catastrophe. The position is simple: unless developing nations are energy exporters themselves, they face a triple whammy in which fuel and food crises trigger financial crises. Faced with the choice of feeding their populations or paying their international creditors, governments will opt for the former. Sri Lanka was the first country since the Russian invasion to default on its debts, but is unlikely to be the last. The world appears closer to a full-blown debt crisis than at any time since the 1990s.
Putin has rightly been condemned for "weaponising" food, but his willingness to do so should come as no surprise. From the start, the Russian president has been playing a long game, waiting for the international coalition against him to fragment. The Kremlin thinks Russia's threshold for economic pain is higher than the west's, and it is probably right about that.
If proof were needed that sanctions are not working, then President Joe Biden's decision to supply Ukraine with advanced rocket systems provides it. The hope is that modern military technology from the US will achieve what energy bans and the seizure of Russian assets have so far failed to do: force Putin to withdraw his troops.
Complete defeat for Putin on the battlefield is one way the war could end, although as things stand that doesn't appear all that likely. There are other possible outcomes. One is that the economic blockade eventually works, with ever-tougher sanctions forcing Russia to back down. Another is a negotiated settlement.
Putin is not going to surrender unconditionally, and the potential for severe collateral damage from the economic war is obvious: falling living standards in developed countries; famine, food riots and a debt crisis in the developing world.
The atrocities committed by Russian troops mean compromising with the Kremlin is currently hard to swallow, but economic reality suggests only one thing: sooner or later a deal will be struck.
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 300 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at guardian.letters@theguardian.com
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