Ponos: Complications with Delivery of MiGs from Belarus Bound to Arise Due to Serbia Backing Out of Military Exercise

Zdravko Ponos(BETAPHOTO)

Zdravko Ponos, the People’s Party vice-president and former chief of staff of the Army of Serbia, believes that Serbia’s decision to back out from the Slavic Brotherhood military exercise with Russia and Belarus, will certainly lead to complications with the delivery of the four MiG-29 aircrafts which Minsk had donated to the Serbian army, and which are currently being overhauled.

“Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko is not in a position to deal with the strength of his friendship with [Serbian President Aleksandar] Vucic in great detail. Complications with the delivery of the four used MiG-29s from Belarus, which were supposed to be donated at the beginning of 2021, are bound to arise. The total worth of this donation is only known to Vucic. If [their delivery] is ever to happen, it will be costly, even with Vucic’s casual way of dealing with national funds and interests,” Ponos said in an interview for the Sept. 17 issue of the Vreme weekly.

According to Ponos, the situation in Belarus is such that Serbia definitely needed to call off its participation in the said military exercise, but it should have been done before Aug. 11, when Serbia supported an EU declaration on the presidential election in that country.

The withdrawal of Serbian military personnel from peace missions, Ponos sees as something that has nothing to do with Belarus, but is rather a “sloppy and detrimental attempt at damage control,” following the signing of an agreement in Washington according to which Belgrade is to treat the Lebanese Hezbollah movement as a terrorist organization.