FRANKFURT – Ahead of the announced visit of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to Belgrade, the German paper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) recalls that Serbia and Ukraine have maintained military cooperation for many years.
Former US Ambassador to Belgrade Christopher Hill told FAZ about the efforts the United States made to support military cooperation between Serbia and Ukraine during his tenure as ambassador in Belgrade from 2022 to 2025, according to Beta News Agency.
Hill said that at the beginning of his term in Serbia, the Ukrainian ambassador came to him with a list of military equipment that Ukraine urgently needed.
“My embassy team looked into whether the Serbs were able to meet those needs, and they were,” Hill said.
He added that the United States then began “supporting the purchase of significant quantities of Serbian ammunition, which was known to be urgently needed by Ukraine.”
To this day, Serbia places great importance on maintaining that it has not sold a single bullet directly to Ukraine, which is formally true, FAZ writes, adding that the supplies were routed through intermediaries such as Poland or the Czech Republic.
“Of course, everyone in Belgrade who was involved knew that countries like Poland or the Czech Republic were not the end users of the weapons. But, of course, these transactions did not remain a secret from the Russian side. This is evidenced by several public warnings that Russian intelligence services addressed to President Vučić,” Hill said.
Hill added that those public warnings had been preceded by several private ones and that, on at least one occasion during a meeting in Beijing, Vladimir Putin personally warned Serbia about the issue.
Hill emphasized that it was extremely important to the United States that Serbia’s involvement not be viewed as war profiteering, “but rather in the context of a lasting and sustainable relationship between Serbia and Ukraine, based on the long-term shared interests of the two countries.”
The former US ambassador also said that criticism of Serbia for not joining the European Union’s sanctions against Russia was exaggerated. He said that, as ambassador, he argued that:
“Serbia can take other, far more important measures instead of merely serving as a participant in a sanctions regime, which would hardly change the overall situation.”
According to Beta, ahead of the Ukrainian president’s visit, there has also been discussion of potential joint drone production through trilateral cooperation, with Ukraine providing expertise, Serbia serving as the manufacturing location, and the United Arab Emirates acting as the financier, FAZ reports.
