Serbian Interior Minister Aleksandar Vulin promised the Russian ambassador to Serbia Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko that Belgrade will never join what he described as "anti-Russian hysteria" and added that Serbia, "led by (President) Aleksandar Vucic, is the only European country that has not imposed sanctions on Moscow."

“Serbia will never be part of the anti-Russian hysteria in which the Russian citizens’ property and the property of the Russian Federation is stolen; it will not ban the Russian media, nor will it expel Russian children from schools and erase Russian writers and scientists from school textbooks,“ Vulin told Bocan-Harchenko, as quoted by the Interior Ministry press release.

He added that “a civilization that would remove Russian writers, scientists, freedom fighters, a civilization that would give up everything that the Russian people have given to the world, would end up very poor. Those who would like to erase Dostoevsky have never read that the world is not worth a single child’s tear, and that is why they can call for the murder of Russian children.”

“Serbia will never forget that in 2015, after an agreement between two presidents, Vladimir Putin and Aleksandar Vucic, Russia prevented a resolution in the UN Security Council declaring Serbia’s people the first genocidal nation in the history of the world,“ Vulin said in the meeting with Botsan-Kharchenko.

The 2015 resolution, vetoed by Russia, sought to condemn the 1995 Srebrenica massacre as genocide.

Vulin added he was confident that the cooperation between the two countries would develop for mutual benefit and thanked the ambassador for Russia’s consistent support of the integrity of Serbia.