Money talks:
Serbia has sharply increased its military production, and its defense enterprises have switched to working in three shifts to produce weapons that go to Ukraine, sources familiar with the situation in Belgrade told Kommersant.
According to them, this happened two years ago, immediately after the start of the full-scale invasion of the Russian army in Ukraine. During this time, Kiev received 800 million euros worth of weapons from Belgrade, but not directly, but through intermediaries, the Financial Times found out .
“Yes, we export our weapons. We cannot export to Ukraine or Russia, but we have many contracts with Americans, Spaniards, Czechs and others. What they do with it in the end is their business,” Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic told the newspaper. According to him, even if he knew for sure who the Serbian weapons ultimately ended up with, it “wouldn’t concern him.”
He noted that Belgrade today has a “golden opportunity, since its weapons are cheaper than Western ones” and Serbian arms exports could grow even more.
Before this, the Reuters agency wrote about the supply of Serbian weapons to Ukraine , which published a secret Pentagon document entitled “Europe: a response to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.” It followed that Serbia, although it refused to train the Ukrainian military, agreed to supply weapons to Ukraine or “has already supplied them.”
The then-current Minister of Defense of the country, Milos Vucevic, responded to this by saying that “Serbia has not sold and will not sell weapons to either the Ukrainian or Russian sides.” “Someone obviously wants to destabilize our country and drag it into a conflict in which we will not participate,” he said.
As Kommersant’s sources explained, the Serbian authorities in this situation “are primarily afraid of a harshly negative reaction from Moscow,” which previously expressed concern about arms supplies to Ukraine.
“If the Serbs knew that weapons were coming to Ukraine even through third countries, this cannot be regarded as a friendly step,” said Vladimir Dzhabarov, head of the Federation Council Committee on International Affairs.
Moreover, after the start of the war, the Serbian authorities repeatedly declared support for the territorial integrity of Ukraine and voted at the UN for several resolutions “condemning Russian aggression against Ukraine.” However, Belgrade has not yet joined the US and EU sanctions against Russia.