Russian-Serbian relations - challenges and perspectives

In the past 17 years, Serbia's foreign and defense policy has radically turned to the EU and NATO. Despite this, each new pro-Western government tried to maintain good relations with both Russia and China. Given the prevailing positive attitude of the peoples of Serbia towards Russia, the rejection of the traditionally friendly Russian-Serbian relations was not at all the right choice of the pro-European political elite of the country, which happened after the “5th October Revolution” in Serbia in 2000. An analysis is made of the state of the economy of Serbia, as well as its foreign and national security policies in early 2017, in order to understand the decisions that are currently being made by Serbian political leaders regarding the EU, NATO and Russia. During the analysis, not only the latest statistical data were used, but also materials obtained from the Serbian (regional) media, which made it possible to obtain more meaningful information in the field of the political and economic development of the country. A brief historical review of the formation of the Serbian state and Russian-Serbian relations, from the XIX to the beginning of the twentieth century. Therefore, in order to help the reader understand modern Russian-Serbian relations, the historical context of the formation of the ties and relations that take place between Russia and Serbia is presented. The authors mainly used Serbian and English-language literature, poorly represented in the Russian Federation.