Serbia is quietly helping Ukraine with ammunition: FT explained how it works

Belgrade has been exporting shells used by the Ukrainian Armed Forces to Western allies since 2022.

Serbia is quietly increasing its sales of ammunition to the West, which ultimately goes to the defense of Ukraine, although the country has not joined Western sanctions against Russia.

The Financial Times writes that since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the volume of ammunition exports from Serbia to Ukraine through third parties amounted to about 800 million euros.

“This is part of our economic revival, and this is important to us. Yes, we export our ammunition. We cannot export to Ukraine or Russia… but we have had many contracts with the Americans, the Spanish, the Czechs and others. What are they doing with that’s at the end of the day – that’s their job. Even if I know [where the ammunition goes], it’s not my job to make sure our ammunition is legal so that we sell it… I have to take care of my people. , and that’s all. That’s all I can say. We have friends in Kyiv and Moscow. These are our Slavic brothers,” said Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic.

Serbia is not a member of NATO or the EU, and its people have long harbored sentimental attachments to Russia and resentment of the West following NATO’s 1999 bombing of their country. Belgrade is also counting on Moscow to block international recognition of Kosovo.

Vucic has resisted Western pressure to accept sanctions against Russia and allows Russian flights, although he says he is committed to his country becoming an EU member. He also seeks to hedge his bets and maintain a distance from Vladimir Putin.

For the West, seeking support for Ukraine has become more important than pushing Serbia’s nationalist leader toward democratic reforms, analysts say.

“Vučić is silent about the fact that there is support for Ukraine, but not direct,” says Ivan Vejvoda, a researcher at the Institute for the Humanities in Vienna. “He’s speaking vaguely. It’s obvious he doesn’t want to admit it – he wants his far right to be happy – when in fact Serbia was providing massive assistance to Ukraine in its fight against Russia.”

Serbia’s participation in the supply of ammunition to Ukraine is so veiled that official data does not reflect it, diplomats and analysts say. Although Serbian officials note that the arms industry is developing rapidly.

(C)UNIAN 2024