US imposes sanctions on top Serbian official considered "Moscow's man"

The US Treasury Department on Tuesday, 11 July, announced the imposition of sanctions against Aleksandar Vulin, the head of the Serbian Security and Information Agency, who is close to the country's current president, Aleksandar Vučić.

Source: European Pravda

Details: According to the US side, Vulin is involved in transnational organised crime, illegal drug trafficking and abuse of office, which has led to widespread corruption in the Serbian government.

"Vulin maintains a mutually beneficial relationship with Serbian arms dealer Slobodan Tesic, who is under US sanctions, helping him to ensure the free flow of illegal arms shipments across Serbia's border," the US Treasury Department said.

Vulin, who has been the head of Serbia's intelligence service, the Security and Information Agency, since last year, previously served as the country's minister of defence and interior. He is the first Serbian official to be sanctioned while in power since Slobodan Milosevic's rule in the 1990s.

Vulin is considered a "Moscow man" in the Serbian leadership. His appointment as intelligence chief had previously angered Serbia's pro-Western opposition and is seen as another rejection of Western calls for Serbia to align its foreign policy with the EU if it truly wants membership.

In the past years, Vulin has expanded cooperation between the general staffs of Russia and Serbia, which even worked out a plan for a joint military operation against Kosovo. He is also the first Serbian politician to officially proclaim the concept of a "Serbian world" similar to the "Russian world" - "We will protect all Serbs wherever they live" - as Minister of Defence in December 2020.

In October, Vulin said that Serbia should recognise as soon as possible that it "does not want" to be in the EU and that it "does not belong there".

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