Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic goaded the EU on May 9 by posting images from the Kremlin and Red Square across his social media accounts.

Vucic joined Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping and over 20 other world leaders for the Victory Day parade in Moscow, defying warnings from EU officials that such a visit would derail Serbia’s long-stalled EU accession bid.

The visit underscores Belgrade’s increasingly ambivalent stance toward the European Union and highlights the bloc’s waning influence over the Western Balkan country.

Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico and Republika Srpska’s Milorad Dodik were the only other European leaders present, offering Vucic some diplomatic cover — while deepening the sense of fragmentation within the EU.

“I gave my word to President Putin that I would be here today and I did what I said,” Vucic said on May 8, a statement calibrated to appeal to his domestic base and underline his foreign policy independence.

Former Prime Minister Milos Vucevic praised the president's bravery, suggesting that Vucic had somehow put himself on the line by ignoring the EU’s empty threats (such warnings are inconsequential given the moribund enlargement process).

Serbia has been an official EU candidate since 2012, but it has not opened a new accession chapter since 2021. Vucic’s Moscow visit — including bilateral meetings with Putin and Xi — thus doesn’t risk much, and the president knows it.

The visit is, however, a clear provocation. Vucic seemed to be testing EU leaders to make good on their threats by posting daily updates on social media of all the persona non grata he met in Moscow — Putin, Dodik and Patriarch Kirill.

The optics of the visit — which were splashed across Serbian television and social media — signal Vucic’s growing confidence in pursuing an independent foreign policy that is decoupled from EU alignment. 

“Serbia cannot sit on two chairs forever,” EU officials like to say. But for Serbia the question is, why not? The bloc’s leverage is visibly eroding. The carrot and stick no longer hold. 

More than two decades after the EU’s Thessaloniki Summit promised eventual membership to the Western Balkans, six countries — including Serbia — remain outside the Union, and most have become resigned to the fact. 

Amid internal EU divisions, rising geopolitical competition and US-Russia diplomatic overtures, Belgrade sees fewer incentives to toe Brussels’ line. Vucic’s attendance at the Moscow parade is emblematic of that shift — a calculated snub that highlights just how little sway the EU now holds over its once-hopeful Balkan candidates.