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Serbia has been handed more time to find a buyer for the Russian stake in its only oil refinery and avoid US sanctions, a temporary reprieve to a crisis that has threatened to bring economic chaos in the Balkan country.
“We succeeded,” President Aleksandar Vučić said in a social media post on Friday, after the US Treasury unexpectedly granted a 30-day extension to a deadline for Russian state-owned Gazprom and its subsidiary to sell their majority holding in Serbia’s NIS refinery.
The US Treasury had warned that it would impose sanctions unless the Russian owners sold the stake as part of Washington’s efforts to target Moscow’s primary sources of revenue. The original deadline expired in February, and the second deadline loomed on Friday before the US granted an extension.
“Thank you to all the people in Serbia who fought and thank you to our American partners for understanding. We have preserved stability, we are returning Serbia to the path of success,” Vučić said.
Vučić, who just a day earlier told the Financial Times that he did not expect Washington to grant another extension, has been in a difficult political situation at home from protests against his regime’s perceived corruption and mismanagement.
Students have blockaded universities across Serbia since a train station canopy collapsed and killed 16 people in the city of Novi Sad in November. They have been joined by demonstrators from across the country that has created the biggest political challenge to Vučić’s 13-year rule.
A fuel crisis would have exacerbated that challenge, which prompted Vučić to vow swift action to resolve the US demands while trying to balance his relationship with Russia, a traditional Slavic ally that Belgrade has refused to condemn even amid the war in Ukraine.
But the US decision to extend the oil refinery deadline shows a level of successful dialogue between Belgrade and Washington, a western diplomat said. “Of the hundreds of entities that were on that sanctions list, only one got a delay in deadline — the Serbian NIS project,” the diplomat said.
Vučić has developed cordial ties with the top levels of Donald Trump’s administration. Donald Trump Jr. recently visited Belgrade and did a podcast interview with Vučić, who had also granted his family rights to develop a landmark in the Serbian capital into a Trump hotel.
As NIS produces nearly all of the fuel consumed in Serbia and it imports nearly all of its oil via a pipeline in Croatia, the sanctions would have all but shut down fuel supply in the country.
“A fuel crisis has been averted for now, but to what extent the effect will be noticed on the ground, where the student protests and the political crisis have kept a squeeze on Vučić, is questionable,” said Milos Damnjanovic, an analyst at the BIRN consultancy in Belgrade.
