Russian president to visit Serbia on October 20

Russian president to visit Serbia on October 20

BELGRADE -- Tomislav Nikolić has announced that Russian President Vladimir Putin will visit Belgrade on October 20.

“Putin will come to Belgrade to celebrate with us the day when Belgrade was liberated (in 1944),” the Serbian president told Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) late on Thursday, adding that the Russian leader will arrive here on his invitation.

Nikolić revealed that he also received an invited to come to Russia for the 2015 celebration of Victory Day over Fascism.

Touching on the Ukrainian crisis, Nikolić said that the EU and Russia were on opposing sides of the issue, and Serbia was friends with everyone.

“Had we taken sides with any of the two, we would have lost a friend,” Nikolić said.

Nikolić also told RTS that the donors' conference in Brussels was successful, adding that it showed that Serbia has friends around the world and that the world trusts Serbia, which is also good news for investors.

"It is the result of a policy that was pursued not only by the current government, but by generations before us,” Nikolić said.

The donors' conference held in Brussels on July 16 gathered the representatives of 60 countries and 23 international organizations, who jointly collected EUR 1.846 billion to aid Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina after the devastating floods that hit the two countries in May.

Out of this sum, EUR 995 million will be allocated to Serbia and EUR 809 million to Bosnia-Herzegovina, while EUR 42 million have been raised for cross-border projects mainly for the development of flood and natural disaster prevention systems.

Out of the total funds raised for Serbia...