Belgrade - (AFP) - Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic announced Sunday that Serbia has signed an agreement to obtain Russian gas shipments at reduced prices for three years.

"It's the best deal ever in Europe," he added, after a phone call with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.

Serbia, a candidate to join the European Union, has remained close to the Kremlin since the invasion of Ukraine. And if Serbia condemned the Russian aggression in the United Nations, it refused to join the European sanctions against Moscow, which continues to supply gas at preferential prices.

With this new agreement, Serbia's complete dependence on Russia was reaffirmed, especially since Moscow owns the largest stake in the Serbian national oil and gas company.

The details of this new contract, especially in terms of prices and volume of gas shipments, will be announced "in the coming days" after a meeting with Gazprom's leaders, according to the Serbian president's expression.

"We will have a safer winter in terms of gas supplies," he said in a televised press conference.

Currently the bill is "almost three times lower than anywhere in Europe, and this winter it will be 10 to 12 times lower," he says.

The country currently receives 6 million cubic meters of gas per day from Russia's Gazprom at a price of 251 euros per thousand cubic metres.

Aleksandr Vucic also indicated that he had discussed with Vladimir Putin the possibility of increasing storage capacity in his country.