In his first interview as Serbian Foreign Minister, former prime minister Ivica Dacic said Serbia would not be joining any EU-led sanctions imposed on Russia over Ukraine.

“We respect the territorial integrity of every country member of the UN, including Ukraine, but Serbia will not join any sanctions on Russia, as that state is not just our friend and economic and political partner but a state that never imposed sanctions on Serbia,” Dacic told the newspaper Blic.

Serbia’s new government plans to maintain a neutral position on the crisis in Ukraine, attempting to maintain good relations with Russia, Ukraine and the EU.

As prime minister, Dacic said Serbia hadn’t taken a stronger position on Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine as Serbia was not China, Russia, the US or Germany, but a small country with little impact on international relations.

The Russian ambassador in Belgrade, Alexander Chepurin, said he also did not expect Serbia to impose sanctions on Russia as a result of pressure from the EU.

“Serbia has its own interests and wants to follow and defend them, not run after the decisions of others at any price,” Chepurin told the daily newspaper Vecernje Novosti.

He added that Russia would also not be changing its stance on Kosovo, whose independence from Serbia, proclaimed in 2008, both Serbia and Russia contest.

“There will be absolutely no change of stance by Russia on Kosovo. Our position is based on international law and UN Resolution 1244,” Chepurin said.

He accused the international community of having double standards on Kosovo and the Crimea – which Russia recently unilaterally annexed from Ukraine.

“For them, it is acceptable to use force against a sovereign state in order to separate part of its territory,” he said, referring to NATO intervention in the conflict in Kosovo in 1999, “while a peaceful referendum by the citizens of Crimea is declared illegitimate,” he said.

Both the EU and the US have targeted Russia with sanctions, accusing Vladimir Putin’s government in Moscow of illegally annexing Crimea from Ukraine and of stoking a separatist insurgency in Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine.