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Serbia has discreetly increased its ammunition sales to the West to bolster Ukraine’s defense – even though it is one of only two European countries not participating in Western sanctions against Russia.
Estimates shared with the Financial Times come out SerbiaRussia’s ammunition exports to Ukraine through third parties cost around 800 million euros – a figure that President Aleksandar Vučić pointed out was generally accurate – since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 . He sees this situation as a business opportunity and insists that he will do the same. don’t take sides war.
“This is part of our economic recovery and important to us. Yes, we export our ammunition,” he said in an interview. “We cannot export to Ukraine or Russia. . . but we already have many contracts with the Americans, the Spaniards, the Czechs and others. Ultimately what they do with it is their business.
“Even though I know [where the ammunition ends up], that’s not my job. My job is to ensure the fact that we legally deal with our ammunition and sell it. . . I need to take care of my people, that’s all. That’s all I can say. We have friends in Kiev and Moscow. These are our Slavic brothers.”
Asked if the €800 million figure was in “the ballpark”, he said no more than a year but “maybe in two or three years, something like that”.
Serbia is not a member of NATO or the EU, and its people have long had an emotional attachment to Russia while resenting the West after NATO’s bombing campaign against their country in 1999. Belgrade also looks relied on Moscow to block international recognition of former member Kosovo. The province of Serbia is recognized by most Western countries, but is withheld from United Nations membership by Russia and China.
Vučić has resisted Western pressure to impose sanctions on Russia and has allowed Russian flights to continue, even as he says he is committed to his country’s EU membership. He also sought to hedge his bets and distance himself from Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Europe and the US have been trying for years to distance Vučić from Putin,” said a Western diplomat, adding that the key player was US ambassador Christopher Hill, who arrived in Belgrade a month after the full invasion.
“Everyone is looking forward to it [Hill] to fight Vučić but his only agenda is to separate Belgrade from Moscow,” the diplomat said. “He was successful. Vučić has not met or even called Putin for many years. And of course there is the issue of arms shipments to Ukraine.”
For the West, finding support for Ukraine has become more important than pushing Serbia’s nationalist leader toward democratic reforms, analysts say. “Vučić concealed that there was support – but not direct – for Ukraine,” said Ivan Vejvoda, a fellow at the Institute of Human Sciences in Vienna. “He spoke vaguely. It’s clear he doesn’t want to admit this – he wants to keep his far-right wing happy – when in fact Serbia already has [offered] massive aid to Ukraine against Russia.”
Serbia had a thriving arms industry during the Cold War when it was part of Yugoslavia and is a manufacturer of standard Soviet ammunition calibers still widely used by the Ukrainian armed forces. The country is also joining a global trend of seeking to boost arms sales at a time when Russia is ramping up its wartime economy, ramping up production faster than Ukraine’s Western allies.
Vučić said Serbia has a golden opportunity because its weapons are cheaper than those in the West, adding that the overall scale of Serbia’s ammunition exports could increase.
“The Russians have done a great job innovating and revitalizing their arms production. They do it quickly, but when you need to make a profit it’s not easy,” he said.
“In the United States and Germany, you cannot say that now you will produce another tank without making money. . . And we’re good because now people see it [that we are cheaper].”
According to diplomats and analysts, Serbia’s involvement in supplying ammunition to Ukraine is sufficiently concealed that official data does not reflect it. Christoph Trebesch, who is leading the effort, said the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, which monitors support for Ukraine, has not directly tracked Serbia’s activities and has not encountered systematic evidence about Serbia’s contributions.
Serbian finance minister Siniša Mali said the defense industry, which employs 20,000 people in the country of 7 million, could expand rapidly.
“I consider it a business group,” he said. “I think we are still below the capacity of more developed countries, but now is the time.”
