Why is Russia again keeping Serbia "on a short leash" with gas?

It took three years for Serbia to receive Russian gas under favorable conditions - at least that's what Aleksandar Vučić claimed in September 2025, during the grandiose military parades in Beijing. It is the same event during which those photos of him were recorded Vučić at the very end of the column of statesmen.

He showed that the Republic of Serbia is at the end of each column to his friends from Russia short-term gas agreement, which was achieved with a big delay and only until March 31, 2026. And we still don't officially know about the future, because nothing has been signed yet, and no one even mentions agreements that are measured in years.

We will "probably" get gas

General Manager of Srbijagas Dusan Bajatovic he stated that the contract for the purchase of Russian gas "will probably be extended for another six months" and stated that the price of gas for households will not be changed, as well as that Serbia has enough of this energy until the end of the heating season.

Bajatović admitted that the long-term gas supply contract that Serbia has with Russia is being annexed, but that there are many problems - from European sanctions to problems with payment transactions and similar things that, as he stated, are not so easy to solve.

"We will probably have an extension of the long-term contract for the next six months," Bajatović told RTS.

Vojislav Vuletić, from the Serbian "Gas Association", tells "Vreme" that "Bajatović should be trusted."

"Bajatović is pressing that directly with Gazprom, and all that is needed is a signature, which is a fairly simple task," says Vuletić, who heads the Association that has been supporting and fueling pro-Russian energy tactics for decades.

However, it is obvious that everything about gas changed in the agreement with the Russians, at the moment when the problem with the Oil Industry of Serbia broke out.

These two deals, the agreement regarding cheaper blue energy in exchange for everything that Serbia has done for Russia by selling NIS, have been going side by side for decades. Until now, Russia, with cheaper gas to Serbia, made the decision that its economic loss is less significant than the political one, but that may change.

The price at which we paid gas to the Russians until now was between 420 and 600 euros for 1.000 cubic meters.

There is no room for independence.

The main question is how it will be next winter, although Bajatović claims that we have stock.

"What will happen now, our contract from March onwards due to large stocks, practically until the month of October, will be six million cubic meters per day, not ten because we cannot fill Banat Palace", said Bajatović.

However, what is kept in the Banat Palace is absolutely insufficient for Serbia to last, for example, a year. Because the current capacity of this underground storage is 450 million cubic meters of gas, and Serbia needs 3,2 billion cubic meters in one year.

As if to spite, neither Bajatović nor the Russians are too interested in expanding this capacity, even though it has been talked about for decades. If that were done, we could save more blue energy and be economically, but crucially politically, independent for longer.