Aleksandar Vucic's Double Game With Russia – The Balkan

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The public announcement by the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service that Serbian defense companies, despite Belgrade’s declared neutrality, continue to supply ammunition to Ukraine, was not a surprise to me. When I participated in the scientific conference Balkan Dialogue last year, when asked by Russian experts who only had some doubts about it at the time, I personally told them that Serbia under the rule of Aleksandar Vučić was selling large quantities of weapons to Ukraine that were killing a large number of Russian soldiers.

It is clear that the Russian services must have had this information as well. The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service recently issued a statement that – “Serbian military industry is trying to shoot Russia in the back”.

The sensation is not that the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) openly pointed out the double game of Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić, who says he is a “friend of Russia”, but at the same time supplies weapons to Kiev. The sensation is that official Moscow has stopped pretending not to notice the duplicity of official Belgrade. In this far from a polite intelligence report, another sensation is visible under a transparent veil and it does not try to hide it. This is that this SVR report could not have appeared without the consent of the top leadership. This means that through the SVR report, the Kremlin is sending a signal and a direct message to Serbian president Vučić.

The report says that in order to cover up anti-Russian activities, Serbian defense companies used “a simple scheme using false end-user certificates and intermediary countries.” Among the latter, NATO countries are most often mentioned, primarily the Czech Republic, Poland, Bulgaria, as well as “exotic options involving African states.”

“The contribution of Serbian defense workers to the war, the outcome of which Europe would like to see as a “strategic defeat” of Russia, amounts to hundreds of thousands of shells for multiple rocket launchers and howitzers, as well as a million rounds for small arms. It is unlikely that such deliveries can be justified by “humanitarian considerations.” The largest companies of the national military-industrial complex, including Yugoimport SDPR, Zenitprom, Krushik, Sloboda, Prvi Partizan and others, are participating the SVR report states.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic was invited to Moscow on May 9, seeking to show that he was ignoring threats from EU bureaucrats, who had promised him “difficulties on the path to EU“ membership if he decided to take such a step. In Moscow, Russian officials told Vucic that Serbia must stop selling weapons to Ukraine. However, despite the promise, Vucic did not undertake anything in this regard.

Vučić only came to the Victory Parade in Moscow under pressure from the Serbian public, as his electorate is predominantly made up of people who consider Russia a brotherly state.

Refusing to go to Moscow after a public invitation from President Putin would cause Vučić irreparable political damage in the eyes of his own people. In other words, his government, which is already in a very difficult position, would suffer a severe blow.

Immediately after returning from Moscow, where he scored political points with the citizens of Serbia, the Serbian president completely changed the story. After returning to Belgrade, the head of European diplomacy, Kaja Kallas, also arrived. She spoke with Vučić, primarily about “the possibility of accelerating the process of Serbia’s European integration”. Quite “coincidentally”, on the day of Kallas’s visit to Belgrade, Zelensky called the Serbian president. According to Vučić, they had a “good and open conversation”.

And this is precisely the essence of the way Vučić governs. While he presents himself to Russia and his voters as a great Russophile, in reality he is working against the interests of Russia and Serbia and for his own personal benefit, as well as Soros’s European Union. In Serbia, Vučić has long been considered a traitor, and Serbs openly express this with mass protests. Vučić withdrew all Serbian institutions from Kosovo and handed over local Serbs to full control and the persecution of Kosovo Albanians. And it was on the promises that he would not betray the Serbs in Kosovo that he came to power. In addition, he promised fraternal relations with Russia, while secretly arming the Ukrainian army. In mass protests that have lasted for more than a year, the people of Serbia are demanding Vučić’s resignation for corruption and national treason. The statement from the Russian foreign intelligence service came to the Serbs only as confirmation of what kind of traitor he was.

Meanwhile, President Vučić could not ignore the SVR statement. On the same day, he officially addressed the nation and promised to “block suspicious transactions that could arm the Kiev regime.” At the same time, he stated that 25,000 people work in the Serbian military-industrial complex and that factories must operate.

However, does Vucic want to say that the Serbian military industry cannot survive if it does not sell weapons to Ukraine? The Serbian military industry has been working excellently for decades, has a large number of employees and large revenues. There are two reasons why Vucic is selling weapons to Ukraine. The first is corruption because a significant part of the money is taken by his clan, as resellers. While the second reason is of a political nature, in this way Vucic gets the political support of the European Union.

On one side is a man who sells weapons to Ukraine, while on the other side is the people of Serbia who want fraternal relations with Russia.