"I fear there will be no more postponement of US sanctions for the Serbian oil company NIS", Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said today, Serbian media reported, quoted by BTA.
At the end of August, the US postponed sanctions against the Serbian oil company NIS (Naftna Industrija Srbije), which is owned by the Russian company “Gazprom“ and the owner of the only oil refinery in the country, which is located in the town of Pančevo near Belgrade, for the sixth time. The postponement expires on September 26, and today the company officially requested a new postponement.
NIS was placed on the sanctions list in early January this year due to its connection with Russia's "Gazprom Neft", which is under Western sanctions due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Serbian President Vučić also said that on October 1, salaries for workers in education and healthcare will be increased by five percent, with the regular increase following on January 1.
He said that student Bodan Jovićić, in whose defense protests were held in several Serbian cities last night, was arrested "for using the most brutal violence against someone else's property, destroying someone else's premises".
Vučić pointed out that there were only 3,150 people at these protests throughout Serbia. The Serbian president pointed out that the media talked about the protests over the arrest of the “poor innocent student“, but did not show why he was arrested, although they could have done so.
“So this man (Bogdan Jovicic), while he was in custody and at the moment when his detention was extended for an additional 30 days, his father died. What caused a strong reaction in society was that he was brought to his father's funeral with his feet shackled. This is where the question arises as to why this was done“, Vucic commented to Blic TV.
He asked how, in terms of citizens' emotions, the fact that the detention of Anita Dimoski or Jelena Tanaskovic, who have been in custody for a year, has been extended, has not caused any emotion in anyone.
“Jelena is a single mother and has to take care of two children. "Who takes the children to school? And who does anything with Anita Dimoski's children? Her parents wrote me a letter. The father is 82 years old, they want to see me, they ask if their child will ever have the opportunity to at least defend himself in freedom or something like that," Vucic said.
A few days ago, the High Prosecutor's Office in Novi Sad again indicted 13 people for the collapse of the railway station canopy in the northern Serbian city on November 1 last year, which killed 16 people and seriously injured one. The accused are former Minister of Construction Goran Vesic, his colleague in the ministry Anita Dimoski, former acting CEO of the Serbian Railway Infrastructure Company Jelena Tanaskovic, and former CEO of the company Nebojsa Šurlan.
According to the latest court ruling, all the accused are under house arrest.
When asked how he would comment on the repeated decision to extend the house arrest of the suspects in the collapse of the canopy at the Novi Sad station, Vučić replied that "he cannot say anything".
"The prosecutor's office requested detention in custody, if I am not mistaken, and the court did not fully implement the measure that the prosecutor's office requested, but rather partially accepted and partially rejected the requests. I can sometimes intervene in extreme cases, not to intervene, but to assess something. And these are all questions and I just want to tell you that the problem is that certain media or some of the people who belong to, I don't know, this or that bloc, will only see and interpret one thing, and will not see and will not look at things as a whole“, said Vučić.
The Serbian president also commented on the readiness of students to present candidates for deputies that they would support in the early parliamentary elections.
According to Vučić, the opposition will lose these elections and will appear with "five-six-ten different lists due to different interests".
At the end of the interview with Blic TV, Vučić invited citizens to come to the military parade, which will be held tomorrow in Belgrade.