Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandar Vulin gave a lengthy interview to Berliner Zeitung published Oct. 13, that ended with a question about the possibility that Serbia would join the BRICS. Vulin said that his nation is definitely going to attend the BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia over Oct. 22-24, and that “BRICS has become a real alternative to the European Union” membership, for which Serbia has been striving since 2009 while getting further and further away, as had Türkiye before it, too, applied to join BRICS.
Minister Vulin was attending the tenth annual East-West Balkans Summit, which is being held in Berlin. Where Berliner Zeitung asked “In a few days, this year’s BRICS summit will take place in Kazan, Russia. Azerbaijan and Türkiye are not the only countries that have applied for membership. Would joining the BRICS also be an option for Serbia?”
TASS translated his answer to that question in its coverage of the interview: “Naturally, Serbia will be present in Kazan. It would be irresponsible of us not to look at all the opportunities, including BRICS membership. If BRICS is attractive for other countries, for instance the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, or Türkiye, why should it be different for Serbia? So, there is no doubt that BRICS has become a real alternative to the European Union.”
When finally asked to whom the future belongs—the West or the non-West—the Serbian deputy prime minister began his reply: “The future belongs to values. The values of all humanity, whether in the geographical East or the geographical West. We Serbs believe in traditional values: God, nation, family. People all over the world believe in them.”
The BRICS membership issue only came up—raised by the Berliner Zeitung interviewer—after a set of long and fairly confrontational exchanges about how the EU has treated Serbia’s application, and the truth about the war in Ukraine and its history, which Vulin traced back to NATO’s 1999 bombing of Serbia in the context of NATO’s expansion that same year: “We are realists. We also do not believe that Germany or the United States will ever admit the mistake they made by bombing Serbia in 1999. But we will not pretend that this did not happen.”
