BELGRADE, Serbia

Serbian Foreign Minister Nikola Selakovic confirmed on Wednesday that he plans to meet with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov in Moscow.

Earlier, Russian Ambassador to Serbia Aleksandar Bocan-Harcenko said Belgrade had officially accepted the invitation and that President Vladimir Putin had given instructions for the visit's arrangements.

Selakovic confirmed his visit to Moscow in an interview with the Serbian TV Pink network. This visit is important because Lavrov's planned visit to Serbia's capital, Belgrade, that would have taken place on Monday and Tuesday was postponed when Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Bulgaria closed their airspace to his flight.

Lavrov's travel to Serbia would have been the first by a high-ranking Russian official since the beginning of the Ukraine war, and it was planned against the backdrop of the EU's continued efforts to punish Moscow with sanctions and other measures for the war in Ukraine.

"You will see that no one in the international community will talk about what happened with the flight ban," he said.

Now, Lavrov is visiting a NATO member, which is also an EU candidate, implying that these countries had some sort of issues with Serbia, he lamented.

Serbia, which is almost entirely dependent on Russian gas and oil, has been under growing pressure to maintain its neutrality and avoid sanctioning Moscow.

In recent months, its President Aleksandar Vucic has been walking a tightrope, saying that penalizing Russia would cost Belgrade dearly while simultaneously assuring the EU that "Serbia is on the European path" and that this was the country's "only policy."

As Serbia's 10-year gas supply contract with Russian giant Gazprom expired at the end of May, Vucic held a phone conversation with President Vladimir Putin on May 29 and announced that the two sides had agreed on a new three-year deal.

The agreement was expected to be formally signed during Lavrov's trip to Belgrade.