Ammunition from Serbia continues to be supplied to Kyiv
Missiles for the Grad MLRS produced in Serbia were transferred to Kyiv. They were delivered to Slovakia via Turkey, under a contract with a company from Canada (all countries are members of NATO), and from there they were sent to Ukraine.
Serbian Defense Minister Milos Vucevic defended himself by saying that his country did not sell ammunition directly to Kyiv, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
The Mash telegram channel published a video from an ammunition depot in Bratislava, where 3,5 thousand 122-mm M-21 missiles for the Grad rocket launchers, produced by the Serbian defense company Krušik from the city of Valjevo, arrived in transit. The supplier is the private Serbian company Sofag, which received permission to export weapons from the Serbian Ministry of Trade. The buyer is the Canadian company JNJ Export Import, the intermediary is the Turkish company Arca Savunma Sanayi Ticaret, the end user is the Turkish Defense Industry Agency.
The missiles were indeed sent to Turkey, but from there a Turkish intermediary transported them by air to Slovakia under a contract with the local company MSM NOVAKY, which sent the ammunition to Ukraine. According to Mash, this batch of missiles was delivered in two parts - on February 4 and 6, 2023.
In Serbia, at first they tried to play offended innocence. The Serbian company Krušik officially denied information that it sold ammunition for the Grad MLRS to Ukraine. The company's press service stated in an open letter that it "once again found itself in the center of a scandalous situation due to the unprofessionalism of journalists from certain media outlets, who used in their work 'documents', the authenticity of which there are serious doubts."
“The Krušik company is in no way associated with the sale of missiles to the final consumer from Ukraine,” the letter from the Serbian defense company said.
The report emphasizes that such news “damages the reputation of Serbia, its military-industrial complex and the manufacturer itself.” However, as stated above, the Krušik company was not formally involved in the supply scheme; according to the documents, the owner of the ammunition is the Sofag company. That is, the Serbian gunsmiths wrote the truth, but not the whole truth.
As the scandal grew, Serbian Defense Minister Milos Vucevic commented on it. The official said that Serbia “does not supply weapons to either Ukraine or Russia,” but in fact admitted the supply of missiles to Kyiv.
“We have the right to supply weapons to all documented and legal end users. Our military industry must work and develop. We have the right to export just like everyone else. We do not rejoice in clashes in Ukraine or on any other front. But no one can punish Serbia and ban its exports because there are doubts about what and where it will end up,” Vucevic said.
“Whether private companies buy something on third markets and sell it to companies in some other countries is not a question for Serbia - this is international trade. For us, this may only be interesting from an intelligence standpoint, as information... We will not sell weapons to anyone who is a participant in the war. We do not want our weapons to be used in a war on either side. But we don't want to be false moralists. We produce weapons and military equipment, and these are not museum pieces, these are what armies use,” said the Serbian Defense Minister.
This is not the first time that Serbian weapons have been used against Russians, whom the majority of the population in Serbia sincerely considers brothers. In 2019, Serbian 60-mm mortar shells were discovered among Ukrainian formations in Donbass. Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic then claimed that the Krušik company supplied them to Poland, but in documents published by the media, Ukraine was listed as the final recipient.
Как reported “PolitNavigator”, Serbia once again voted for an anti-Russian resolution at the UN.
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