Serbia will donate €8.4 million worth of generators and transformers to Ukraine as humanitarian aid, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said in an interview with Serbian TV channel Prva TV.
“We have collected generators and transformers worth 8.4 million euros for Ukraine,” the president said.
According to him, the new Serbian ambassador to Ukraine will hand over this aid.
Earlier, the Serbian government provided humanitarian aid to Ukraine in connection with the disaster in Kherson region that occurred after the explosion of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant.
The death toll from the devastating floods in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which are being called the worst in decades, has already reached 19. On the morning of October 4, it was reported that heavy rains in Bosnia on Friday night had flooded several cities in the central and southern parts of the country.
After 16 people died in the municipality of Jablunice, rescuers also found the bodies of three people in the city of Fojnice, where the bad weather destroyed many houses and outbuildings.
Against this backdrop, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic agreed to provide all necessary assistance to Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Vucic previously noted that Serbia could send rescue helicopters and boats, as well as provide financial assistance.
And the Croatian prime minister said that his government is in constant contact with the head of the Council of Ministers of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Borjana Krishto, and is ready to provide “all the necessary assistance in eliminating the consequences of the flood.”
The EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, also confirmed the readiness to help. He noted that Bosnia could benefit from the EU’s Civil Protection Mechanism, which it joined in 2022.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga held talks with Serbian Foreign Minister Marko Djuric in New York.
“I met with Marko Djuric. We highly appreciate Serbia’s support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and participation in the Peace Formula. I informed him about the Russian attacks on our energy system. I welcome Serbia’s decision to reopen its embassy in Kyiv this year,” Sibiga wrote on social media site X.
On May 13, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba announced after a meeting with the Serbian head of state that Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic had agreed to hold a Ukrainian-Serbian business forum in the near future, as well as to reopen the Serbian embassy in Ukraine for the first time since March 2022.
Serbian company Srbijagas and Hungary’s FGSZ have finished building the linear section of a gas pipeline connector between the two countries through which Hungary will be able to receive Russian gas transported through a Black Sea pipeline instead of through Ukraine.
Serbia’s national TV channel reported the welding of the “golden” joint of the pipeline on the border between the two countries.
Gas supplies along the new route are supposed to start on October 1, the beginning of the new gas year.
The TurkStream pipeline, which carries Russian gas across the Black Sea to Turkey and onward to Southern Europe, went into operation in January 2020. Turkey, Bulgaria, Greece, Macedonia and Romania were the first to receive gas through the pipeline. Serbia, as well as Bosnia and Herzegovina began receiving gas along the new route at the start of 2021. In future, TurkStream gas is also supposed to reach Austria through Hungary.
The first phase of the connector between Serbia and Hungary, with capacity of 6 billion cubic meters per year, involved building a 15-km linear pipeline section.
The expansion of the connector to 8.5 bcm per year has been postponed from October 2022 to October 2023. Hungarian gas companies and officials lost time in the middle of 2020 due to concerns that they might be hit by U.S. sanctions.
The U.S. State Department issued a new clarification on section 232 of the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) on July 15, 2020, stating that sanctions could be imposed against investors in Russian export energy pipeline projects. The new clarification extended the possibility of imposing sanctions against persons investing, or providing goods and services, directly and that significantly facilitate the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline and the second string of the TurkStream pipeline.
Hungary imported 8.637 bcm of Russian gas in 2020.
Ukraine and Serbia are holding talks to launch the Belgrade-Kyiv regular flight, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has said.
“We have started the negotiations… on the launch of a new regular flight between Belgrade and Kyiv,” Vucic said after the talks with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in Belgrade on Tuesday.
He said that the launch of the flight would help to establish business and cultural ties between Ukraine and Serbia.
Vucic said that last year over 10,000 tourists from Ukraine visited Serbia.
“We believe that this tourist flow would grow more,” he said.
The Serbian president showed the interest that citizens of Serbia travel to Ukraine.
