[2] Pankov was a leading participant in Vojvodina's so-called "Yoghurt Revolution" of October 1988, which led to the overthrow of the province's existing government and its replacement by allies of Slobodan Milošević.
[10]) The Socialists won a minority government and remained in power through an informal alliance with the far-right Serbian Radical Party (Srpska radikalna stranka, SRS).
In January 1994, Pankov supported Milan Martić's candidacy for president of the self-proclaimed Republic of Serbian Krajina in Croatia.
His main focus was on Serbia's relations with Serbs in the breakaway territories of the Republic of Serbian Krajina (Croatia) and the Republika Srpska (Bosnia and Herzegovina).
In December 1994, Pankov articulated the government's position that Serbia was in favour of a peaceful resolution to the ongoing Croatian and Bosnian Wars and supported equal rights and status for all warring sides, calling in particular for the Serb communities in these countries to receive "the same rights that have been recognized for the members of other ethnic groups on the former Yugoslav territories."
[16] In the same month, he said that around ninety per cent of Serbia's humanitarian aid to the Republika Srpska and the Republic of Serbian Krajina consisted of food, with the remainder being devoted to medicine and textbooks.
[18] After the conclusion of the Croatian War, Pankov took part in the Serbian government's discussions with United Nations administrator Jacques Paul Klein on issues in the rump territory of Eastern Slavonia, Baranja, and Western Syrmia.
In 2015, it was reported that Pankov and fellow Milošević-era cabinet minister Mihalj Kertes had joined the Serbian Progressive Party (Srpska napredna stranka, SNS).