THE CHALLENGES OF ‘SITTING ON TWO CHAIRS’. TESTING SERBIA’S NEUTRALITY POLICY IN THE UKRAINIAN CRISIS
THE CHALLENGES OF ‘SITTING ON TWO CHAIRS’. TESTING SERBIA’S NEUTRALITY POLICY IN THE UKRAINIAN CRISIS

Summary/Abstract: Since 2007, Serbia is considered to promote a model of foreign policy based on maintaining an equal distance between Brussels and Moscow. This strategy became more evident after the annexation of Crimea in March 2014, when on the one hand Serbia supported the territorial integrity of Ukraine, and on the other hand it abstained from voting the UN resolution which was meant to reaffirm the territorial integrity of Ukraine and did not impose sanctions on Russia. These contradictory decisions were followed by numerous other political events that required Serbia’s clear-cut positioning in the Ukrainian conflict in 2015 and 2016. The paper assesses the impact of the conflict in Ukraine to be found in the main discourses around Serbia’s foreign policy of ‘sitting on two chairs’ between its European perspective and maintaining its close ties with Russia, as viewed by elites in the period between 2014 and 2016. First, the paper explores the various meanings attached to Serbia’s military neutrality in scholarly and policy debates. Next, it looks at how those meanings have been enacted in discourses and practices along the first three years of the Ukrainian crisis. The conclusions discuss the paradoxes of Serbia’s positions, pointing towards the ‘politics’ of the neutrality policy as revealed in the discourses that surrounded the Ukrainian crisis and various East-West divides that it triggered.

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