Dear Mr. Speaker of the State Duma, Mr Volodin,

Distinguished deputies of the State Duma,

Dear friends,

I am extremely honoured by your invitation and the opportunity to address you today and at the same time to all the citizens of Russia whose representatives you are in this high House. At the very beginning, I would like to convey the warmest greetings of the citizens of Serbia, the National Assembly and President Aleksandar Vucic, and on behalf of all of them I wish prosperity to the Russian Federation and all of its citizens, and at the same time to convey our firm readiness to continue the historical friendship and brotherhood which we should be proud of.

Let me also express one personal feeling and I hope that I it will not abuse my privilege of speaking before you today. I have been involved in politics for a long time and for almost three decades I have been continuously elected a member of the Assembly of Serbia and the former Yugoslavia, I have also served as Prime Minister, Minister of the Interior and of Foreign Affairs, and co-chair of the Serbian-Russian Intergovernmental Committee on Trade, Economic and Scientific and Technological Cooperation, and in that time I stayed in Moscow many times and welcomed our Russian colleagues to Belgrade. I see today's address to the State Duma of the Russian Federation as one of the greatest honours in my career so far.

Today's extraordinary relations between the Republic of Serbia and the Russian Federation are based on stable centuries-old foundations built by many of our great ancestors. To understand our present as well as our future, it is very important to know the past. The historical heritage is the solid foundation on which the relations between our two countries have been and are being built. For centuries, Tsarist Russia provided selfless assistance to the Serbian, as well as to other Balkan peoples, in their struggle for national liberation and unification.

Many clever and great people on both sides, not only statesmen and politicians, but scientists, writers and artists, contributed to the brotherhood and friendship of our two peoples. The names of Serbs who contributed to the power of Tsarist Russia are well known: from Count Sava Vladislavich-Raguzinsky, through numerous generals and admirals in the Russian Army such as Miloradovic, Zoric, Vojinovic and others, or members of the Russian Academy of Sciences such as Teodor Jankovic Mirijevski and Atanasije Stojkovic.

Russia supported the Serbian people’s struggle for liberation and unification, both politically and militarily and in many other ways. Many great names of Russian culture did not forget Serbian themes - from the great Pushkin and his poem about the leader of the First Serbian Uprising Karadjordje (Black George), which Dostoevsky declared a "brilliant diamond in Pushkin's poetry", through Rimsky-Korsakov’s Fantasia on Serbian Themes and Tchaikovsky's Marche Slave, to the recently tragically deceased General Khalilov, artistic director of the "Alexandrov" Ensemble, and his great march-prayer the General Miloradovich March. The famous Russian architect Nikolay Krasnov is the author of the Government of the Republic of Serbia, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the magnificent building of the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia.

This year marks the 145th anniversary of the Serbian-Turkish war of 1876, when, in addition to General Chernyaev, who became commander of the Serbian army, thousands of Russian volunteers arrived in Serbia, including such well-known names as the famous painter Polenov, famous doctor Botkin and Colonel Nikolay Raevsky, the inspiration for Leo Tolstoy’s famous character of Count Vronsky, who died in Serbia near the town of Aleksinac, where a church was built. We treat their sacrifices with great gratitude and nurture the memory of these great heroes of our common struggle with utmost care.

The Serbian and Russian people have been on the same side in all the great challenges throughout history, including the 20th century, in both world wars. The Serbian people treat the enormous sacrifices made by the Russian people and other peoples of the Soviet Union in the fight against Nazism with great reverence. We treat all the memorials to the Red Army soldiers who died on the territory of Serbia with great respect. We are strongly against all attempts to revise history and reduce the number of victims and contributions to the defeat of Nazism and fascism and the rehabilitation of the bearers of that ideology in the time we live in. While Hitler and the Nazis were greeted in our region with flowers and enthusiasm, and while other peoples of the Balkans fought with the Nazis near Stalingrad, the Serbs, together with the Russians, suffered grave sacrifices to break fascism. That is why we will not allow anyone to revise history.

The diplomacy of Tsarist Russia, as well as modern Russian diplomacy, followed the events in Serbia and the Balkan countries with deep understanding and care. Then, as well as today, Russia realised the importance of the Serbian factor for the political stability of Southeast Europe. With the disintegration of Yugoslavia and the Soviet state, the Serbian and Russian people again faced the same challenges they faced in the first decades of the 20th century. Three decades after these events, in a time of crisis, unrest and without a stable system of international relations, the Republic of Serbia and the Russian Federation are building relations of strategic partnership imbued with mutual trust and understanding. Evidence of the stable friendly and political relations can be seen, among other things, in Russia's consistent support of Serbia's territorial integrity and, on the other hand, Republic of Serbia's not joining the sanctions against Russia. We are very grateful to the Russian Federation for its support in all international forums and organisations in our fight to keep Kosovo-Metohija as part of the Republic of Serbia.

Dear friends,

The wealth of our relations throughout history and the centuries-long intertwined ties of our peoples and cultures is a heritage that few nations in the world have. It is our duty to preserve them and to speak of them to the younger generations and the generations to come. But that legacy is not in itself enough for our relations to be strong and friendly in the future, and for us to duly honour our ancestors who established them both in war and in peace. We have to take care of that ourselves. Our generation has an obligation to the great tradition to improve Serbian-Russian relations in every respect and raise them to an even higher level.

We in Serbia are ready for that and we work on it every day. I know very well that your leaders are also committed to this mission - all of you as members of the State Duma, your Government and your President Vladimir Putin. In both Belgrade and Moscow, we are well aware that the temptations of the 21st century are such that we can and must overcome them only if we oppose them together, in the best tradition of the friendship that we have proudly inherited.

Today, Serbia and Russia are much more than traditional, historical friends and allies.

You know that the relations between the two countries have taken an upward trajectory in 2012, since Serbia has been led by a coalition of the Serbian Progressive Party headed by Aleksandar Vucic, and the Socialist Party of Serbia, of which I am the leader. In 2013, the Republic of Serbia and the Russian Federation signed a Strategic Partnership Agreement, a comprehensive document that defines the goals of our joint cooperation. This Agreement has formalised our existing strategic partnership, going on for decades, even centuries, in all areas of common interest. It is the product of the extraordinary closeness of our views of the world around us and the way we think we can make that world better in the time to come.

Serbia and Russia are above all committed to an order based on international law, we have confirmed that countless times. At every opportunity, and I want to repeat it this time as well, Serbia expresses great gratitude to the Russian Federation for placing the primacy of international law over the strength of international power in difficult challenges for my country, thus remaining one of our most important pillars in the global political arena. Today, Russia is the greatest and most influential protector of our supreme national interest, which we protect on the international scene, and that is the preservation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Republic of Serbia. Russia, just like Serbia, is firmly of the opinion that Kosovo-Metohija is an inalienable part of Serbia, and that has been one of our most important political pillars in the fight for our interests on the international scene for decades.

As you know, the Republic of Serbia is extremely constructive in the dialogue with Pristina, with the mediation of the European Union. We want a compromise and we want to reach a solution that will bring peace and stability to our region in the long run. But we do not allow these solutions to be imposed and one-sided, as they have been many times before and have never brought anything good.

They tell us - give up Kosovo-Metohija and the path to the European Union is open for you. That is not what partners tell each other. We want to enter the European Union, we are working hard on it and we are not changing that goal as one of our strategic priorities. But we do not accept that on that path we will have obstacles placed before us that have never been placed before anyone, nor can such a thing as the recognition of illegal secession be expected from any sovereign state. It is similar to the sanctions directed against the Russian Federation. Serbia will not impose sanctions on our great partner and friend - Russia. We ourselves have been exposed to the same kind of pressure mechanism and we know very well how unfair, not to mention how inefficient, it is. Russia is one of Serbia's largest economic partners. There is no industrial branch in which we have not recorded huge growth, from energy, road and railway infrastructure, agricultural production, chemical and wood industry…

In various strategic sectors, such as infrastructure, Russian investors and companies play a huge role in capital projects, both completed and still ongoing in Serbia. First of all, in the field of railway and energy infrastructure, which are also our strategic development corridors, on the construction and modernisation of which Serbia bases its constant and high economic growth. We still have ample space to be used in the field of economy, primarily in joint arrangements of high-tech projects, scientific research and the conquest of new technologies. We have the capacity for it - Serbia as a growing market and economic leader in the Balkan region, and Russia as a world technological and research power.

We are moving in this direction as regards cooperation in the field of medical sciences. Is there a better example of that than the fact that Serbia is the first country in Europe to produce the "Sputnik V" vaccine with the approval of your "Gamaleya" institute which developed the great vaccine? This is the crown to our joint fight against the COVID-19 pandemic in the past year and I would like to take this opportunity to thank you once again for the help Russian experts, doctors and staff of your epidemiological services provided to the people of Serbia during the difficult months of fighting corona.

You know that Serbia is at the very top of Europe and the world in terms of the percentage of vaccinated population, which is why we expect that we will soon end the fight against the epidemic and return to normal life. We would not have been able to achieve that, or at least not so quickly, if it were not for the timely and extensive deliveries of "Sputnik V", which vaccinated hundreds of thousands of our citizens. I was the first Serbian official to receive the “Sputnik V” vaccine. Thank you for that as well.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

We are facing a period in which uncertainty and instability will increasingly be a feature of relations between nations and states. Serbia is a small country and has often been the victim of major global crises and conflicts. But it is precisely because of these difficult lessons from history that today Serbia is trying to be resistant to all challenges by wanting to develop and constantly strengthen its traditional friendships and alliances. In that sense, Russia is one of the pillars of our support in the modern world, and that will not change. On behalf of the Republic of Serbia and on behalf of our citizens who cultivate fraternal feelings towards the Russian people, I invite you to continue to build these relations with us, with all of our strength and as best we can. It is our debt to our glorious ancestors, and even more, our obligation to the young people to follow.

Long live Russia

Long live Serbia

Long live Serbian-Russian friendship.