Russian influence on the rise in Serbia

At the end of a busy street an hour from Belgrade, past outdoor cafes, discount clothing stores and second-hand mobile phone outlets, artists at a tiny wax museum worked day and night for two months to complete a tribute to Vladimir Putin.

The figure stands alongside a Yugoslav communist party flag and a panoply of such local luminaries as late strongmen Slobodan Milosevic and Josip Broz Tito, thanks for Putin's support of Serbia's opposition to the Kosovo's independence.

"Around 75 percent of Serb citizens respect Putin and Russia, so we decided to let Putin be the first foreigner," said Dragan Markovic Palma, the mayor of Jagodina, which unveiled the statue last month. "Russia has helped a lot."

As Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic campaigns before April 24 general elections, his bid to prepare the country for European Union membership is facing a lurch to nationalism. It includes throw-back sentiment for Russia in the country of 7.2 million people as the EU is itself shaking under doubts about its future and resentment lingers over the bloody breakup of Yugoslavia. One of the beneficiaries has been the Radical Party, which wants to end talks to join the trading bloc.
[url=http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-wp-blm-serbia-75f5d352-00c2-11e6-8bb1-f124a43f84dc-20160417-story.html]READ MORE AT CHICAGO TRIBUNE

Okay. I am from Serbia. Not from Jagodina but Niš. Either way this is a funny story actually because those figures were in some garage of a sculpturer from Jagodina and Palma and another person helped in restoring them and make a museum. Now, the funniest thing about this are the numbers. I am not sure about percentage because we really have no time to think about Russia or America.

Our prime minister Vučić is one of the most hated people in the country right now by the people who are not supporting him. What I mean is that those who do not like him actually hate him a lot. I say all this because he is everywhere now and this partly because he is narcissist and partly because the elections are on so every chance for him to be seen even with this fat Palma mobster is a good marketing.

We try to balance between EU and Russia and that is not what Serbs like to do.

The problem that the EU dragged onto itself is that it wanted to isolate Russia. So the former USSR satellite countries were given EU membership. But they are draining the EU already weak economy. The UK is primarily only interested in leaving the EU because of the migration of the poorer former USSR countries to the UK. Ukraine and Serbia are being courted to join the EU. Turkey wants to get in as well.

In Russia it's always been said that Russians and Serbian are some kind of blood brothers becauase they share the same religious belief = Eastern Orthodox Church. Kind of an argument, right. However, there's a thing about the moden societey. Nowadays nations don't claim yourself brothers just because of their religious similarities.