Serbia’s relations with Russia took a dramatic downturn several days ago when the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a sharply worded rebuke to the Serbian regime for selling arms, ammunition, and other military equipment to Ukraine in the midst of the ongoing conflict with Russia.

The rebuke comes following the Serbian President’s sojourn in Moscow for the 9 May Victory Day festivities. It also marks a notable reversal of Russia’s previous positions that had been interpreted as supportive of the Serbian government in the face of the severe internal political crisis that the latter is facing.

The fact that, notwithstanding public professions of neutrality, which is also mandated by Serbian law, and even friendship to Russia, the Serbian government has been supplying the Kiev regime with various kinds of military hardware has been a matter of public knowledge for some time. In a Pentagon document dating back to April 2023 it was stated that the Serbian government had agreed to provide Ukraine with lethal assistance. In chart form the document lists the “assessed positions” of 38 European governments in response to Ukraine’s requests for military assistance and affirms that Serbia not only “had committed to sending lethal aid [to Ukraine] or had supplied it already” but that it also “had the political will and military ability to provide weapons to Ukraine in the future.”

By mid-2024, as reported by the Kiev Independent, one of the principal media outlets of the Ukrainian regime, the volume of Serbian deliveries had amounted to $855 million in lethal military supplies. The nature and volume of these deliveries, which would appear to make Serbia a co-belligerent and not as it persistently claims a neutral in the current conflict, was independently confirmed the same year  by London Financial Times:

“Serbia has been discreetly stepping up sales of ammunition to the west that ends up bolstering the defence of Ukraine — even though it is one of only two European countries not to join western sanctions against Russia.”

On 28 May 2025, under the ominous title “Serbian military industry tries to shoot Russia in the back,” Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service issued an official statement against the background of the foregoing facts, which for the most part were already publicly known. It lists activities that point not only to the Serbian regime’s disregard for its own neutrality laws but also contempt for its professed friendship toward Russia:

“The Press Bureau of the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation reports that, according to information received by the SVR, Serbian defense enterprises, contrary to the ‘neutrality’ declared by official Belgrade, continue to supply ammunition to Kyiv. The cover for anti-Russian actions is a simple scheme using fake end-user certificates and intermediary countries. Among the latter, NATO countries are most often mentioned, primarily the Czech Republic, Poland, and Bulgaria. Recently, exotic options involving African countries have also been used for this purpose.”

In continuation, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service minces no words concerning Russia’s perception of the nature of this clandestine arms business with Ukraine that the Serbian regime has been conducting with fake end-user certificates and under false pretenses:

“The contribution of Serbian defense workers to the war unleashed by the West, the outcome of which Europe would like to see as a ‘strategic defeat’ of Russia, amounts to hundreds of thousands of shells for MLRS and howitzers, as well as a million rounds of ammunition for small arms. It is unlikely that such supplies can be justified by ‘humanitarian considerations.’ They have one obvious purpose – to kill and maim Russian servicemen and the civilian population of Russia.”

The latter assertion is self-evident and hardly subject to dispute. Nor does any doubt remain concerning the accuracy of the synopsis of the historical relationship between Russia and Serbia, which should explain the depth and bitterness of Russia’s current disappointment:

“It seems that the desire of Serbian defense workers and their patrons to profit from the blood of fraternal Slavic peoples has made them completely forget who their true friends are and who their enemies are. Russia has come to the aid of the Serbs more than once at the most critical moments of their history. Let us recall, for example, the liberation of Serbia from the yoke of the Ottoman Empire, the prevention of a national catastrophe during the First World War, the fight against the fascist occupiers and their henchmen during the Second World War, the NATO bombing of Belgrade, the Kosovo tragedy. At all these historical stages, fraternal ties and common faith remained immutable for the Russians in their relations with the Serbs.”

The fundamental change in Russia’s public stance concerning Serbia’s duplicitous arms trafficking to Ukraine, which it must have been aware of for a long time whilst choosing to treat the matter with diplomatic discretion, comes against the background of two important developments. The first is the expiration of Russia’s gas treaty with Serbia. Under its terms Serbia was receiving energy from Russia on extremely favourable terms. The treaty was extended recently under an emergency provision for a period of six months to give the parties time to negotiate a new agreement. Unless Russia is still willing to demonstrate generosity, the current Serbian “back-stabbing” regime – if it survives until then – may face in the coming winter the unpleasant prospect of paying for Russian gas under market instead of subsidised conditions. That would undoubtedly exacerbate the social crisis which is already shaking it to its foundations.

The second important factor that shapes this picture is the expressed intention of the largely deindustrialised European Union countries to bring the relatively intact Serbian arms industry under their effective control as part of the ambitious, and some would argue delusional, rearmament programme for the contemplated future war against Russia. 

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Stephen Karganovic is president of “Srebrenica Historical Project,” an NGO registered in the Netherlands to investigate the factual matrix and background of events that took place in Srebrenica in July of 1995. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.  

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