Serbia supplies weapons neither to Russia nor Ukraine, says Defense Minister Vucevic

World April 12, 2023, 16:18

The defense minister admitted it was possible that Serbian weapons could find their way to the conflict zone through some "mysterious way" but Serbia is not involved in this

BELGRADE, April 12. /TASS/. Serbia has not sold and will not ever sell weapons to either Kiev or Moscow, Serbian Defense Minister Milos Vucevic said on Wednesday.

"We have denied those untruths more than ten times and, here you go, we will do it again," the minister said in an interview with the Tanjug news agency. "Serbia has not been and will not be selling arms to the Ukrainian or the Russian side or countries in the region of the conflict."

"Someone evidently has the objective of destabilizing our country and dragging it into a conflict we do not want to be involved in. We are adhering to our established policy in a consistent manner," Vucevic continued.

The Serbian defense minister also said it was possible that Serbian weapons could find their way to the conflict zone through some "mysterious way" but Serbia is not involved in this.

"There is always a possibility of some weapons ending up in a conflict territory in some mysterious way, but that has absolutely nothing to do with Serbia," Vucevic added.

Serbian President Aleksander Vucic announced on March 5 that Serbia was supplying weapons neither to Russia nor to Ukraine. According to Vucic, Serbia had taken additional measures to prevent munitions from being transferred to third parties by including a stipulation into every contract, including with Turkey, banning their resale without Belgrade’s consent.

Earlier this week, the Reuters news agency reported citing the Pentagon’s leaked classified documents, that the Serbian government did not rule out supplying the Ukrainian army with lethal weapons.

The news agency referred to a chart summarizing "the ‘assessed positions’ of 38 European governments in response to Ukraine's requests for military assistance." According to Reuters, the document is marked as classified and not to be handed over to foreign secret services and has the seal of the office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from March 2, 2023.

"The Pentagon chart divided the responses to Ukraine's requests for aid into four categories: countries that had committed to provide training and lethal aid; countries that had already provided training, lethal aid or both; countries with the military ability and the political will ‘to provide future lethal aid,’" the agency noted.

Reuters reported that Austria and Malta were the only two countries marked "No" in all four categories. According to the chart, the Serbian authorities "declined to provide training to Ukrainian forces, but had committed to sending lethal aid or had supplied it already.

It also said Serbia had the political will and military ability to provide weapons to Ukraine in the future." That said, the news agency stressed that it could not verify the document's authenticity.

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