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Aleksandar Vucic and Vladimir Putin during the Russian President's visit to Serbia in January 2019. Maxim Shipenkov / Pool via REUTERS

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic will travel to Sochi on Wednesday (December 4th) to meet Vladimir Putin. The two countries maintain very good relations despite a recent case of espionage of the Serbian army by the Russian services.

With our correspondent in Belgrade, Laurent Rouy

The visit between the two presidents was planned since October, but in November a cloud has come to darken relations yet with good fix. A film showing a Russian secret service agent handing money over to a Serbian army officer at a restaurant in Belgrade was revealed by the Serbian press.

The film had prompted an intervention by the Serbian president, who had publicly asked the Russians why they were spying on Serbia, while the two countries are allied and maintain important military cooperation. In addition, Serbia is the biggest buyer of Russian armaments in the Balkans.

Aleksandar Vucic , however, said that this affair would not lead to a change in relations between Serbia and Russia. A particularly conciliatory position that may be explained by the regular donations of Russian armaments to Belgrade.

Since 2012, that is, since President Vucic came to power, Serbia has strongly developed its military cooperation with Moscow, to the point of worrying Washington. In Belgrade, it is explained that Serbia wishes to maintain good relations in the West as in the East.