- US Sanctions Against NIS AD Novi Sad
The United States has imposed some of the toughest sanctions on the Russian oil industry, the US Department of the Treasury announced on January 10.
In particular, the Russian Gazprom Neft and Surgutneftegaz oil companies, as well as more than two dozen of their subsidiaries, have been subject to restrictive measures.
NIS AD Novi Sad, a Serbia-based Gazprom Neft subsidiary,
has also been placed on the sanctions list.
Gazprom Neft is NIS’s largest shareholder, with 50 % of shares. 6.15 % belongs to its subsidiary, Gazprom. The Republic of Serbia owns 29.87 %, and small shareholders own 13.98 % of the company.
Heavy sanctions have been imposed on NIS, and the US is demanding the complete withdrawal of Russian interests from the company, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić stated. According to him, Serbia should immediately start the NIS ownership transformation plan, which have to be approved by the American side.
“We will have only 45 calendar days for all operations, ending on February 25. Only financial transactions can be extended for another 15 days, until March 12. These financial transactions must also be approved by OFAC’s department within the US government (Office of Foreign Assets Control of the US Department of the Treasury),” Vučić said.
Experts believe that there are possibilities for Serbia to have the majority ownership by buying out the entire Russian stake. However, if the Russian side does not want to negotiate the sale of its stake, Belgrade can nationalize it. In this case, the state would have to pay the Russian side the current shareholder value of the nationalized package.
NIS is one of Serbia’s most profitable companies, one of its largest exporters and the fulcrum of the country’s energy system. Last year, NIS’s revenues grew to 3.3 billion euros, which is 4.5% of Serbia’s GDP.
- Incumbent Croatian President Zoran Milanović Wins the Second Round of the Presidential Election
The center-left Social Democratic Party (SDP)-backed Zoran Milanović won more than 1.1 million votes (securing 75 % of the vote).
The candidate from the ruling center-right Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ, Dragan Primorac, won just slightly more than 380,000 votes (securing 25 % of the vote).
Turnout was about 44 percent.
The election results were a major defeat for the ruling HDZ party, led by Prime Minister Andrej Plenković.
The president’s power is limited in Croatia, but he, as the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, controls foreign policy together with the government of the country. These two areas have been the reason of constant contradictions between Milanović and Plenković, primarily over assistance to Ukraine. This tendency is expected to continue.
- Ongoing Student Protests in Serbia
Most state universities in Belgrade, Novi Sad, Niš and Kragujevac are closed. Students, supported by the public, blocked major traffic interchanges and held rallies in front of state institutions – the Constitutional Court in Belgrade, the Security Information Agency (Bezbednosno-informativna agencija, BIA) in Novi Sad.
In memory of those 15 victims who have died in the fatal collapse of a train station canopy in Novi Sad, 15-minutes of silences — one minute for each life — were also held in Serbia.
Tens of thousands of young people took part in the protests on January, 7-13.
In addition to the student rallies, there were also opposition and civil society protests, farmers and others.
The opposition is demanding the resignation of Novi Sad Mayor Milan Đurić and Prime Minister Miloš Vučević, the leader of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), as well as the prosecution of those responsible for the collapse of the canopy.
The public overwhelmingly supports the protests, exacerbating the distrust of the current Serbian authorities.
According to the opinion poll conducted by the CRTA non-governmental organization (Centar za istraživanje, transparanje i odgovornost), 61 % of Serbian citizens support the current protests and blockades after the collapse of the canopy of the Novi Sad railway station, which killed 15 people.
- The Election Campaign Began in Kosovo on January 11
The Kosovo parliamentary elections are scheduled for February 9, which will be the first regular parliamentary elections in Kosovo since its independence in 2008.
Almost 2 million 76 thousand citizens have the right to vote. In Kosovo itself, the number of voters is slightly less than 1 million 971 thousand voters, while the number of citizens registered to vote abroad is 105 thousand.
The Kosovo parliament has 120 seats. The Central Election Commission has registered 1,280 candidates and 28 political actors to participate in the elections, of which 6 are from the Serbian community.
The start of the election campaign in Kosovo takes place against the background of a conflict over the participation of the main Kosovo’s Serb party, the Serbian List (Srpska lista), in the electoral process.
So, the Serbian List expressed dissatisfaction with the composition of the election commissions and municipal vote counting centers in Serbian districts, as most of them have little or no party representatives.
Representatives of the Serbian List have complained about “the CEC’s attempts to prevent them from equal participation in the election commissions and the election process monitoring.”
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It is crucial the parliamentary elections in Kosovo does not lead to destabilization, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte stressed. Speaking to the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, he said that NATO was in constant contact with both Pristina and Belgrade, especially now when the election campaign in Kosovo had begun. “Of course, we are very much in contact with Kosovo, of course, with Serbia, to make sure that the election coming up in Kosovo later in early February will not lead to destabilization,” Rutte said.
- Former North Macedonian Secret Service Officers Found Guilty in Wiretapping Case
A court in Skopje has announced its guilty verdict in the Tvrdina case, which is part of the Target-Tvrdina (Target- Fortress) illegal mass wiretapping of thousands of North Macedonian citizens and the destruction of wiretapping systems.
The Chief of Staff of the former Director of the National Agency for Counterintelligence (Upravata za bezpečnost i kontrarazuznavanje, UBK), Toni Yakimovski, and former UBK officers Goran Grujevski, Nikola Boškovski and Valentina Symonoska were found guilty of abuse of office and falsifying documents on the destruction of the UBK’s telecommunications monitoring systems. Yakimovski and Symonoska were present in the courtroom, while Grujevski and Boškovski fled to Greece, where they were tried in absentia.
The defendants were found guilty of destroying communication surveillance systems in 2015.
The accused Toni Yakimovski was sentenced to three years in prison for abuse of office and falsifying of documents.
Goran Grujevski was sentenced to 14 years and six months in prison.
Nikola Boškovski was sentenced to 14 years and six months in prison.
Simonoska was given a two-year suspended prison, providing that there is no another crime within five years.
Former Interior Minister Gordana Jankulovska, who was also accused in the case, was acquitted.
Target-Tvrdina case on illegal wiretapping of telephone conversations was opened in June 2017. According to the indictment, at least 4,286 telephone numbers were illegally monitored by the UBK in the period from 2008 to 2015 without court orders. The wiretapping directly and indirectly affected about 20 thousand citizens.
The defendants in another investigation on wiretapping called Target had previously been released due to the case’s statute of limitations expires as amendments to the Criminal Code were adopted in 2023. In particular, the former director of the National Agency for Counterintelligence, Sasho Mijalkov, evaded justice, which led to a scandal and accusations against the authorities.
The Court’s current verdict should demonstrate the effectiveness of the rule of law, which is especially important for North Macedonia given its desire to intensify the European integration process.
