“The war in Ukraine [and] the war against Russia led by NATO has crushed the European economy,” Serbian president Aleksandar Vučić has said, stressing during an interview that the “destruction of Nord Stream by the Biden administration, indirectly through proxies, is killing the German economy”. He said this has had significant “downstream effects” on the wider European Union, due to Germany’s status as the bloc’s economic powerhouse.

“This war is hurting everybody, possibly with the exception, long-term, of Russia, and empowering everybody outside of Europe – the Gulf states, China, Turkey,” said Tucker Carlson, discussing the matters with Vučić.

The sanctions war with Russia has not only caused shortages of coal, oil, and especially natural gas in Europe, however, with farmers in the continent struck by both a lack of Russian fertilizer and a glut of agricultural produce from Ukraine, which is no longer being exported beyond Europe at scale due to Russia strangling its neighbor’s Black Sea ports.

Serbia is culturally close to Russia, with both countries being predominantly Slavic and Eastern Orthodox, as well as having troubled relations with NATO.

Then the leading nation within Yugoslavia, Serbia was bombed extensively by NATO in 1999 on behalf of the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), in an intervention championed by America’s Bill Clinton and Britain’s Tony Blair.

KLA leader Hashim Thaçi, who became Prime Minister of Kosovo after it broke off from Serbia unilaterally following the NATO intervention, went on to be identified as the head of a criminal arms and organ smuggling organization by a Council of Europe inquiry.