According to Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić, the recently concluded Munich Security Conference “showed that international actors are no longer working for peace”.

The international community is no longer interested in ending conflicts, but instead sees peace as an “undesirable ideal”, the Serbian president claimed in an interview with Russia’s TASS published on Tuesday.

The president’s comments come after this year’s recently concluded Munich Security Conference. An annual conference where senior officials and heads of state from around the world gathered in the German city to discuss international security issues, including the Ukraine conflict.

Vučić noted that he has attended the forum several times to gauge “how the West thinks” and its willingness to listen to different opinions, including from “smaller nations like Serbia”.

“Emotional football fans”

Aleksandar Vučić noted that, unfortunately, he did not see any innovative proposals for conflict resolution this year, and described the conference participants as emotional “soccer fans”.

The Serbian head of state also expressed his conclusion that “the word peace seems to have become unloved and unwanted throughout the world”, arguing that despite the changes in global politics, “everything must be done to protect freedom and the right to make independent decisions in line with the interests of the people”.

Vučić went on to say that Serbia intends to maintain its policy of rejecting Western pressure to impose sanctions on Moscow. Serbia is the only country in Eastern Europe, apart from Belarus, that has not imposed sanctions in connection with the Ukrainian conflict.

He admitted in the interview that he did not know how long he would be able to resist Western pressure, but stressed that his country would defend its position “as long as possible”.