Moscow accused Serbia of sending arms to Ukraine through intermediaries despite Belgrade’s official policy of neutrality.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has said his country will halt the export of arms and ammunition amid Russian accusations that Serbian weapons were being sent via third parties to Ukraine.
“We are not exporting anything now,” Vucic told reporters this week. “We have stopped everything now, and there must be special and specific decisions if anything is going to work.”
“We will see … what we will do next in accordance with Serbia’s interests,” he was quoted as saying on June 23 by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Balkan service.
“The most important state bodies will be informed about this.”
In a statement issued on the same day, Serbia’s defense ministry announced that “the export of weapons and military equipment produced in the Republic of Serbia is suspended.”
According to the ministry, future arms exports will need the approval of Serbia’s National Security Council and other relevant government agencies to comply with legislation regulating the sale of military equipment to foreign buyers.
The move came shortly after Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service claimed that Serbian arms manufacturers were sending weapons to Ukraine through intermediaries.
“This has become possible … due to the use of indirect supply schemes,” the foreign intelligence agency said in a June 23 statement cited by Russia’s TASS news agency.
According to the intelligence agency, weapons produced by Serbian defense firms—especially ammunition—are “sent in the interests of Ukraine to NATO countries in the form of complete sets of parts for assembly.”
“This allows Kyiv to formally receive … not Serbian military products, but those assembled at weapons factories in Western countries,” Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service stated.
“Ammunition is assembled and equipped primarily in the Czech Republic and Bulgaria.”
Both countries are members of NATO and the European Union, and both supply military equipment to Ukraine. Serbia is not a member of either organization but has been a candidate for EU membership since 2012.
Although Belgrade condemned Russia’s invasion of eastern Ukraine, it has so far declined to join Western sanctions on Moscow.
‘Military-Industrial Complex’
It was Moscow’s second such allegation against Serbia, a historical ally of Russia that officially pursues a policy of neutrality in the Russia–Ukraine war.
Last month, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service made a similar claim, accusing Serbia’s “military-industrial complex” of “trying to stab Russia in the back.”
“Serbian defense companies continue to supply ammunition to Kyiv, contrary to Belgrade’s declared neutrality,” it said in a May 29 statement cited by TASS.
The intelligence agency added that Serbian weapons were being sent to Ukraine through a “simple scheme” that relied on “fake end-user certificates and intermediary countries.”
“NATO countries, primarily the Czech Republic, Poland, and Bulgaria, feature most often,” the foreign intelligence agency said, without providing evidence for the assertion.
According to the World Bank’s World Integrated Trade Solution report, Serbia exported more than $27 million worth of munitions in 2023.
“We cannot export to Ukraine or to Russia … but we have had many contracts with Americans, Spaniards, Czechs, others,” Vucic told the Financial Times at the time.
“What they do with that in the end is their job.”
Kyiv, meanwhile, has yet to comment on the latest Russian claims or Belgrade’s decision to halt weapons exports.
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