Ambassador of Ukraine to Serbia: Denazification means genocide

Ukrainian Ambassador to Serbia Volodomir Tolkach said that for him denazification means genocide.

He said this while commenting on the statement of the representative of the Serbian Progressive Party, Vladimir Djukanovic, who said that Serbia will be forced to begin the denazification of the Balkans.

“For me, yes (it means genocide), because I saw what Putin’s denazification means in Ukraine. It is pure genocide. So I have no other example of what denazification means,” Tolkac told Radio Free Europe (RSE).

Ruling Serbian Progressive Party MP Vladimir Djukanovic tweeted on July 31, “It seems to me that Serbia will be forced to begin the denazification of the Balkans. I would like to be wrong”.

Djukanovic used terminology that official Russia publicly promoted as a reason for military aggression against Ukraine. Thousands of dead, several million Ukrainian refugees, as well as the destruction of infrastructure, were justified by official Russia by implementing the “denazification and demilitarization” of Ukraine.

“For me, denazification is a kind of genocide against the Ukrainian people, and if someone wants to organize this genocide here in the Balkan countries, I have no comment,” Tolkach told Radio Free Europe.

Djukanovic apologized for the tweet on the same day as a guest on private television Pink.

As European Parliament member Tonino Picula assessed, Vladimir Djukanovic’s statement is part of Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić’s policy to cause instability in the region.

Picula points out that Djukanovic is insignificant in the larger context of this story, “but it is symptomatic of Vucic’s reliance on Russian foreign policy and his and the SNS’s vassal relationship to Putin.”

Serbia is the only candidate country to join the European Union (EU), apart from Turkey, which has not imposed sanctions on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine that began on February 24.