Azerbaijan Adds to National Armaments Made-In Serbia Anti-Aircraft Guns Seized from Armenia  

Anti-aircraft gun (YouTube snapshot)

Anti-aircraft guns made in Serbia’s arms factory Zastava Oruzje in Kragujevac, which Azerbaijan seized during an armed conflict in the Nagorno-Karabakh region from the Armenian forces, have been added to Azerbaijan’s national armaments and displayed at a recently held joint military drill with Turkey.

According to portal Balkan Security Network, the video footage of the exercise shows a Soviet multi-purpose fully amphibious auxiliary armored tracked vehicle MT-LB with Zastava manufactured 20 mm triple-barreled automatic anti-aircraft guns M-55A4.

“The guns in question were seized during a 44-day armed conflict last autumn, when Armenia lost a considerable number of MT-LB vehicles armed with M-55A4B1 and M-55A3B1. The video shows that the MT-LB had been repainted  sand color before delivered to the units deployed in the isolated enclave of Nakhchivan, where a joint military exercise of Azerbaijan and Turkey armed forces, titled “The Steadfast Brotherhood-2021,” was held from Oct. 5 to 8,” according to the article published on the portal.

The portal recalls that prior to the armed conflict, Armenia obtained M55 guns from the Serbian Army surplus weapons through a private company, Vektura Trans registered in Belgrade, noting that the guns were transported from Nis, via Belgrade to Yerevan during 2019 and 2020.

Triple-barreled automatic anti-aircraft guns M-55 have been manufactured in large series in Kragujevac since 1956. They have been exported worldwide, from San Salvador to Indonesia and were widely used by all sides during the civil war in the former Yugoslavia and the 1999 armed conflict with NATO.