‘Everyone is Getting Ready for War’: Vucic Says Serbia’s Arms Exports ‘Selling Like Hotcakes’

While it is a member of the European Union, Serbia is not a member of the NATO alliance, although many of its neighbors are. Belgrade has tried to steer a path between the alliance and Russia, with President Aleksandar Vucic’s government refusing to condemn Russia’s special operation or join Western sanctions against Moscow, and calling for peace.

Vucic said recently that Serbian arms are in such high demand around the globe that the Balkan nation must consciously preserve some of its products for its own needs.

“Everyone needs ammunition. Everyone is buying everything, anything we can make gets sold,” Vucic said. “I don’t know how some of this stuff hasn’t ended up on the battlefields of Ukraine yet.”

“Ammunition is selling like hotcakes,” he added.

He made his comments at the International Defense Exhibition (IDEX) weapons fair in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on Tuesday. Serbia’s display at the show included a variety of small arms as well as vehicles from the state-owned Yugoimport-SDPR, such as the Lazar, Lazar 3, Milos and Milos 2 armored vehicles, the Tamnava multiple rocket launcher system, and the Nora self-propelled howitzer. It also included rocket artillery ammunition, targeting devices, ballistic protection equipment, and other products.

In 2018, Serbia's arms export industry was valued at $897 million, and is the largest in the Balkans.

Noting that the conflict in Ukraine sees upwards of 50,000 rounds fired every day, Vucic said Belgrade must preserve some of its weapons products for its own uses as well.

“Our army and our country must come first. At least 30% of everything made in Serbia must stay in Serbia,” he told reporters. “We can only sell what we can spare. Everyone wants to fight, everyone is getting ready for war.”

Vucic noted that his country is adjacent to several NATO countries, which are more than a small security concern, despite the alliance’s attempts to coax Serbia to join.

“We are surrounded by NATO countries. Bosnia-Herzegovina is not [a member], but NATO troops are there too, as well as in part of our own territory, in Kosovo,” the Serbian president said.

Then known as Yugoslavia, the country was the first to suffer an offensive attack by NATO in 1999, when a US-led air blitz annihilated the country’s infrastructure and separated Kosovo from Belgrade’s rule in the final act of the catastrophic Yugoslav wars that saw that multi-ethnic socialist state fracture into more than half a dozen states. Kosovo formally declared independence from Serbia in 2008, although Serbia does not recognize the move.

Kosovo's prime minister, Albin Kurti, told French media on Monday, the 15th anniversary of that declaration, that he was “very optimistic” that a settlement would be reached with Belgrade to allow for normalization of relations “this year.” However, he criticized Vucic’s decision not to condemn Moscow, saying it had isolated the Balkan nation.