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Russian, Serbian troops kick off Slavic Shield joint drills in Serbia

In the course of the exercise, the Russian and Serbian air defense forces will practice detecting, tracking, identifying and eliminating a notional enemy’s aerial targets while on their joint combat alert missions

MOSCOW, October 14. /TASS/. An official ceremony was held at the Batajnica airfield in Serbia to open the Slavic Shield 2021 joint Russian-Serbian military drills, Russia’s Defense Ministry reported on Thursday.

"An official ceremony was held at the training center for the air defense troops at the Serbian airbase of Batajnica in the suburb of Belgrade to open the Slavic Shield 2021 Serbian-Russian drills," the ministry said in a statement.

As Chief of the Russian Aerospace Force’s Anti-Aircraft Missile Troops Major General Sergey Babakov stressed at the opening ceremony, the drills are aimed at creating and employing a joint air defense group and raising the personnel’s combat skills in the joint fulfillment of assignments.

As part of the drills, a battery of the Russian Aerospace Force’s Pantsyr-S surface-to-air missile/gun systems will be deployed at the Serbian base. It will make part of the joint Russian-Serbian air defense taskforce that will practice shielding the area under its control.

In the course of the drills, the Russian and Serbian air defense forces will practice detecting, tracking, identifying and eliminating a notional enemy’s aerial targets while on their joint combat alert missions.

Throughout the week, the joint air defense group will be on combat alert in new positioning areas at the Pasulyanske-Levade training ground in the Republic of Serbia. The drills will come to an end on October 17.

Russian Pantsyr-S anti-aircraft missile/gun launchers will be engaged in the drills on foreign soil for the first time. Concurrently, Bars 2021 joint Russian-Serbian tactical flight drills are running in Serbia.