Serbia has reached an agreement to extend its existing gas supply contract with Russia, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić announced on March 30, ensuring that Moscow remains the country’s main supplier of natural gas.
Vučić made the announcement following a phone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The new agreement is set for a period of three months and will allow Serbia to import 6 million cubic meters of gas from Russia.
At a press conference, Vučić stated that the gas price will range between $320 and $330 per 1,000 cubic meters. He described these terms as “very favorable” and thanked Putin.
The previous short-term agreement, reached in December, expired on March 31.
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Serbia has begun reducing its dependence on Moscow’s gas, but it still covers more than 80 percent of its needs from Russia.
According to Hungarian energy expert Attila Holoda, in a statement to Radio Free Europe’s Balkan Service, this dependence is driven by both economic and political factors.
However, he emphasized that at this stage, the economic factor remains the most immediate.
“Russian gas has long been supplied to Serbia under relatively favorable terms, while existing infrastructure and established trade relations make this option the easiest in the short term,” he noted.
At the same time, Holoda stressed the importance of the political dimension, as Belgrade seeks to maintain stable relations with Moscow while clearly balancing this with its path toward the European Union.
The European Union is working to reduce Russia’s energy revenues used to fund the war in Ukraine and plans to fully ban imports of Russian oil and gas by January 1, 2028.
The gradual phase-out of Russian gas imports within the EU began earlier this year and does not apply to the transit of Russian gas to third countries.
However, the EU expects Serbia, as a candidate country, to gradually align with all its decisions.
Serbia remains the only EU candidate country in the Western Balkans that has not imposed sanctions on Russia following the invasion of Ukraine.
Serbia is already purchasing gas from Azerbaijan via Bulgaria, while construction of a pipeline toward North Macedonia—expected to begin this year—will enable access to liquefied natural gas from Greece.
