Media image of the visit Volodymyr Zelensky it most faithfully portrayed the fragmentation of foreign policy Aleksandar Vučić. The news about the visit of the President of Ukraine came just before his arrival in Belgrade, which could be partly justified by security reasons.
However, even then it became clear that Zelenski would receive minimal coverage in the pro-government media in Belgrade. He was met at the airport by Minister Handanović, we only heard his statements at the press conference, and RTS stuck to the proven recipe of quoting only the posts that Zelenski published on social networks.
The presence of the President of Ukraine was not visible in the city, the flag of Ukraine was in digital form on the Belgrade Tower on the water. This visit was unpleasant for Vučić for several reasons. You remember how pro-government media and tabloids avoided publishing photos from international gatherings where we see Zelenski and Vučić shaking hands. It could not be avoided now. As a reminder, several TV channels and shows, such as Vesti na Pink, "Live War", or "Aktuelnosti", day after day, for years, systematically bombard the public with reports of how Russia is progressing on all fronts, despite the fact that in this deadly clinch between Russia and Ukraine, the front line moves only a few kilometers to one side or the other, with mutual accusations of attacks on civilian targets, millions of refugees and hundreds of thousands of victims. There is no winner there, nor is there any in sight in the future, except for the fact that these two nations will never again, or for a long time, be able to live as good neighbors.
Vučić will therefore have to explain to his supporters, admirers of Putin, where this sudden love came from, or more precisely the arranged marriage into which Vučić was forced from the EU.
Another, much more serious problem is the attitude towards the Russian side, which will not look favorably on Zelenski's arrival in Belgrade.
All media potentials are engaged to cover this event with news about the fires, the anniversary of the Storm, relations with Montenegro, or headlines like "Picula celebrates the slaughter of Serbian children" on the front page. political. On the day of his arrival, only one tabloid published a picture of Zelensky on the front page, next to which, for the sake of balance, there was an incomparably larger photo of Putin.
Colleagues from the digital edition Times recorded a similar phenomenon, when 4 hours after the news of Volodymyr Zelensky's arrival was published, a series of bot comments arrived in a few minutes so unnaturally composed, that I thought that in a few days all Vučić's bots graduated from diplomatic academies and became career bot-diplomats.
It was especially painful to watch the broadcast of the press conference, where we heard really crazy parallels about the common path to EU membership, because the examples of Serbia and Ukraine are really not comparable here. How we transferred our EU future from the Western Balkans by train to Ukraine is not clear even to Vučić, who played the role of a Eurosceptic, in contrast to his younger colleague whom he described as a Eurooptimist. In these conditions, Zelensky actually acted more coherently, because he openly explained that he is the president of a country at war, that he does not have the luxury of being Eurosceptic and that his government only has the task of extracting money or missiles from others every day. This is where the problem arose, because one of the journalist-activists, Mr. Martens, vividly described the ways in which Ukraine can be helped to kill as many Russian soldiers as possible. Although his editorial office distanced itself from this attitude and wording, it announced the legal protection of its journalist against possible threats.
This deliberate visualization of the war effort exposed the hypocrisy of hiding the substance, through Memorandums on Animal Welfare, or the quality of agricultural products. That is why in the news, from Dnevnik onwards, the phrase was inserted into the report that they discussed numerous topics, but not about military cooperation. Because of the spectators in Moscow.
Allegedly, we will build drones with the Israelis, who will probably fly them over Iran or Gaza, but that has nothing to do with Ukraine or the Russians. Puj pikes does not apply.
Our political and military neutrality was quite compromised by this visit, so on Monday the favorite media slogan was "Serbian chair", I would just like to state that if that chair has 4 legs, one of them became shorter over the weekend, so that Serbian chair, excuse me, is wobbly today.
That's why Vučić, as soon as the plane with Zelenski took off, went to Belegis to hold a rally, to hand out rouge and snowmen, on a stick, to activists disguised as workers in new uniforms.
In the end, this event, despite the summer season, the lack of media attention, actually resembles the famous turn from 1993, when Milosevic first rejected and then accepted the Vance-Owen peace plan for BiH, which later in October the Bosnian Serbs, as they were called, rejected and then the blockade on the Drina and Sava rivers was introduced. What did the internal party directive look like for Vulin, Djuka and other admirers of Putin's image and work, who recently swallowed a dumpling during the visit of the President of the Parliament of Ukraine. The sulking of the Albanians in Kosovo at Zelensky's visit and the removal of the Ukrainian flag in the center of Pristina was presented as a huge victory for our diplomacy.
In the end, Zelenski's arrival shows that Vučić will be able to sacrifice all his political promises, from Gazivode, to the brotherly relationship with Russia, to the fate of Serbia, if his political future comes into question. He, now without a doubt, has turned his own stay in power into the state policy of this country, so that all available resources are intended only and exclusively for that purpose.
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