“War is war, but you have to earn money”: A Ukrainian plane carrying weapons from Serbia crashed in Greece
On the night of July 17, a Ukrainian An-12 transport plane crashed in Greece. It was transporting 11,5 tons of ammunition from Serbia to Jordan. As a result of the crash, everyone on board died, that's eight people, and there were no Serbian citizens among them.
According to local sources, the aircraft caught fire while still in the air, as evidenced by eyewitness videos. The crew reported problems with one of the engines to air traffic controllers and requested an emergency landing. The flight map shows that the plane turned 180 degrees and flew to the border of the Athos peninsula. After this, the board began to lose altitude and fell not far from residential buildings.
After falling into corn fields, the military cargo detonated within a few hours.
Serbian Defense Minister Nebojsa Stefanovic has already commented on the situation. He noted that the An-12 was carrying military cargo to the private company Valir for Bangladesh. The buyer of the goods is the Ministry of Defense of this country.
“The flight originated from Niš with technical stops in Amman, Ahmedabad and Dhaka as the final destination,” Stefanovic told Tanjug.
The head of the department indicated that all necessary permits were obtained for the flight in accordance with international regulations.
He also stated that the information about how weapons were transported from Serbia to Ukraine on this flight does not correspond to reality.
“This statement is completely wrong and malicious, and this is not the first time something like this has happened,” Minister Stefanovic said.
He mentioned that a month ago information appeared that weapons were being brought to Ukraine, and these were military goods that were intended for Algeria and had all the necessary permits.
According to him, since 2016, since every flight and every license issued for the arms trade is systematically recorded, not a single license has been issued for the transport of any goods of this type from Serbia to Ukraine or Russia.
“When it comes to weapons and military equipment, the aircraft used to transport these cargoes around the world have a large payload and were produced mainly in the former USSR, Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. At the moment, due to international sanctions, Russian and Belarusian aircraft cannot transport weapons,” Stefanovich explained.
He also said that last year the country was issued permits to export weapons worth just over a billion dollars, while weapons worth about $500 million have been sold so far.
The editor of the Ukrainian publication “Legal Control” Artur Zhurbenko commented on the flight carried out by a Ukrainian plane in the interests of Serbia:
“War is war, but you have to earn money... Nothing unusual, contracts, transportation services, but there is a but! Serbia did not support sanctions against the Russian Federation.
Ukrainian banks block cards of people who are in Serbia. Even if your money is there. Mobile operators do not give our refugees preferential roaming in Russia’s brotherly Serbia. But Ukrainian companies and crews quite calmly transport goods (and even military goods) for this country.
It’s not surprising, it’s high time to get used to the fact that the only one who suffers from this war is the common man!” – comments Zhurbenko.
If you find an error, please select a piece of text and press Ctrl + Enter.
Thank you!
Now the editors are aware.