As March 24 approaches — the deadline for the sale of the Russian ownership stake in NIS, set by the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) through its most recently issued license — growing nervousness is becoming visible in pro-Brussels circles in Serbia. The reason is, of course, the Hungarian MOL as the potential future owner of NIS, because everything connected with the Hungarian state, especially when it involves an energy giant, in Western left-liberal circles is associated with the detested Viktor Orbán. Since new Hungarian parliamentary elections scheduled for April 12 are also approaching, and with them the possibility of continuing the sixteen-year rule of Orbán’s Fidesz, there are more than enough reasons for nervousness in domestic pro-EU circles.
REFLECTIONS OF PETAR GONJA
Thus, one of the media outlets owned by United Group – Radar – recently published an article by its contributor, a long-time entrepreneur in the oil sector from Novi Sad, Petar Gonja, in which the author attempts to prove that the planned purchase of NIS by Hungary’s MOL and ADNOC from the United Arab Emirates “is in no way a guarantee of the country’s energy security and safety”.
This Radar author bases such a conclusion on the claim that on January 28 a “total reversal” occurred, due to the fact that “the Druzhba oil pipeline was damaged in the hostilities in Ukraine,” and that afterwards Croatia also refused to allow the transport of Russian crude oil via JANAF. Taking this into account, Gonja concludes that “in the newly created conditions, when the delivery of Russian crude oil to Hungary has been halted,” justifying the sale of NIS to Hungary’s MOL as an urgent solution for supplying Serbia with petroleum products can “be compared to asking a blind man to show the way.”
Instead of selling NIS to MOL, as a result of the January agreement between the Russian owner Gazprom Neft and the Hungarian state company, along with a minority partner from the UAE, Gonja believes that a far better option would have been for Serbia to meet the “basic demand for lifting the sanctions” by “removing Russian ownership in several ways, even without Russian consent.” As an example of such an approach, this Radar author cites Romania and Hungary, which “adopted special laws that erased Russian ownership from their oil markets.” In short, this long-time co-owner of the only licensed privately owned producer of petroleum derivatives in Serbia – Standard Gas (founded in 2000 and in bankruptcy since 2025) – and an obvious supporter of Serbia’s European integration, advocates nothing less than the nationalization of Russian ownership in NIS.
THE POLITICAL, NOT ECONOMIC, SIDE OF THE SALE
The reason for this, only at first glance illogical position, lies in the political motivation that the author of this Radar analysis clumsily attempts to conceal by referring to economic and energy “arguments” against the preliminary purchase agreement between Gazprom Neft and MOL. Such motivation becomes clearly visible in the fact that Petar Gonja does not consider problematic, from the perspective of the current situation on the European and global oil markets, only the announced sale of Gazprom Neft’s ownership stake to Hungary’s MOL and the Emirati ADNOC, but also the earlier “political decision” from 2008 that “was decisive for the sale of NIS to the Russians.”
In other words, for the author the problem in both cases is primarily the political, rather than the economic, side of the sale of NIS. Therefore, he warns about the “possibility of misuse of the entire transaction, not only and exclusively in the material sense.” In this context, Gonja with concern cites a recent statement by Maria Zakharova that “the sale of the stake in NIS to Hungarian and Emirati partners is not a withdrawal, but a strategic reformatting,” and that accordingly “Russia remains present in the Balkans, but in a format that prevents Brussels from using sanctions as an instrument of blackmail against Serbia and Russian capital.” Taking into account Zakharova’s statement, as well as the EU decision that from 2027 even MOL will no longer be able to purchase Russian crude oil, Gonja concludes that “by purchasing NIS, Hungary becomes a promoter of Russian interests for another 22 months, and Serbia aligns itself with them.”
HOPES PLACED IN UKRAINE’S POTENTIAL
Since, in view of what has been said, the “strategic concept of ‘reformatting’ the Russian presence in the Balkans will have to wait until the end of the war,” Gonja places all his hopes for obstructing such “reformatting” in “Ukraine’s potential to present its bill at this feast.” Among such potentials, this Radar energy expert apparently includes sabotage on the Druzhba oil pipeline, which, in order to conceal the obvious responsibility of the Kyiv regime, he attributes to some faceless “hostilities in Ukraine.” The author places similar hopes in Croatia’s pressure that Russian crude oil, even if exempted from U.S. and EU sanctions for the needs of Hungary’s MOL, cannot be transported through JANAF. Because of this, the Hungarian energy company has already filed a complaint against the Croatian company with the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Competition for abuse of a monopolistic position.
It is clear that for Radar’s editorial team the most important issue is revealing the political background of the agreement on the sale of NIS between Russia’s Gazprom Neft and Hungary’s MOL, rather than Serbia’s energy security, as Petar Gonja clumsily tries to assure readers. By searching for the political background of the preliminary purchase agreement, as well as the Memorandum concluded between MOL and the Government of Serbia and the content of the future interstate Serbian-Hungarian agreement in the field of energy, Radar is making a media contribution to the key goal of the American sanctions against NIS — the complete removal of Russia from the energy sector of the Balkan states and the consequent elimination of any Russian political influence on the peninsula. Since it is impossible for Serbia, without a significant Russian presence in its economy, to pursue a multi-vector foreign policy and a policy of military neutrality, the interests of Radar’s editorial team appear compatible with the interests of the EU and the United States, but incompatible with the interests of Serbia and the Serbian people as a whole.
BARE PROPAGANDA
Since Gonja’s article is primarily driven by political motives, this Radar author offers no assessment of the monopolistic pressure exerted by Croatia’s JANAF, just as he ignores the question of Kyiv’s responsibility for threatening the energy stability of Central Europe and the Balkans. Remaining at the level of bare political propaganda against the preliminary purchase agreement between Gazprom Neft and MOL, Gonja does not even attempt to explain the claim that, in the current situation on the global oil market — disrupted by U.S. and EU sanctions against Russia and then by the American-Israeli attack on Iran — a forcibly nationalized NIS under the ownership of the Serbian state would perform better than a regional energy giant such as Hungary’s MOL, together with a global energy giant such as the Emirati ADNOC. In order to strengthen among readers the impression of the complete helplessness of Hungary’s MOL, supposedly faced with Ukrainian sabotage and Croatian pressure and therefore unable in the future to ensure Serbia’s energy stability by importing cheap Russian Urals crude oil (discounted on the market due to sanctions), Gonja omits the fact that since 2025 MOL has been purchasing and transporting oil via the Croatian port of Omišalj on the island of Krk from Kazakhstan (which is shipped through the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk), as well as from other countries. According to Bloomberg, the Hungarian company in the previous month alone contracted the purchase of 1 million tons of oil that does not come from Russia, which will be transported to Krk by seven chartered tankers.
THE GOAL — DISCREDITING RUSSIA
The ultimate goal of this Radar analysis of the future sale of NIS is to disqualify Russia in the eyes of Serbian readers. Therefore, the author advances insinuations about Russia’s geopolitical interests, allegedly sacrificing Serbia’s energy security by choosing to conclude a purchase agreement with Hungary’s MOL instead of with the Serbian state. In the text, MOL is portrayed as an unreliable energy supplier and a company with a poor reputation in the region. To strengthen the impression among Serbian readers of Russian ruthlessness — which, according to classic Western Russophobic stereotypes, is supposedly inherent to every “Oriental despotism” — Gonja links Serbia’s refusal to nationalize the Russian majority capital in NIS with the “security and safety of one man.” This, of course, refers to the President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, who, according to Gonja’s insinuations, allegedly secured the Kremlin’s protection by failing to exercise the right of first refusal.
In this regard, the Radar author not only fails to explain that the right of first refusal cannot be exercised in conditions of a forced sale, but also that Article 2 of the Agreement between the Government of the Republic of Serbia and the Government of the Russian Federation on cooperation in the oil and gas sector prohibits the nationalization of property. He also omits the fact that at a press conference on November 25, 2025, Aleksandar Vučić announced the possibility of taking measures against Gazprom Neft and NIS similar to those advocated by Petar Gonja. And then, for some reason, the President of the Republic abandoned the implementation of the political program of United Group.
CONCLUSION OF A NOVI SAD AUTONOMIST
However, these facts are not important to the Radar author. The only important thing is to create the impression in a divided and conflicted Serbian public that the agreed Russian sale of NIS to Hungary’s MOL serves the strategic geopolitical interests of Russia, and that through this new energy arrangement Moscow participates in preserving the personal power of Viktor Orbán and Aleksandar Vučić. Since it is primarily engaged in propagating ideological stereotypes of classical Russophobia, as well as the related Serbophobia, Radar does not publish serious economic or geopolitical analyses. In this context, the inclusion in Radar’s energy analysis team of an elderly Novi Sad autonomist is hardly accidental. After October 5, 2000, he was actively involved in the Serbian energy sector together with Milan Doronjski, the son of Stevo Doronjski, Tito’s leading autonomist.
