Serbia Orders Weapons for as Much as USD1.3 Billion

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Last year Serbia ordered weapons and military gear for USD1.318 billion which is more than the combined value of all purchases up until the end of 2016, when the process of modernizing the Serbian Army began.

The Balkan Security Network website said on Aug. 11 that the size of the procurements was listed in an annual report of the public Jugoimport-SDPR company for last year. The report states that the total number of individual contracts equaled 287 and involved 31 countries.

"The dramatic rise in weapons procurements implies new large-scale contracts. Russia was a major partner and four Mi-35M combat helicopters, three Mi-17V-5 transport helicopters, two Pancir-S1M anti-aircraft batteries, systems for electronic warefare and fighting drones etc., were purchased from it," the reports says.

The report recalls that down payments are the usual practice when forging large deals, but that there is no publicly available information as to how much Russia was paid for the weapons, due to international sanctions and the blocking of the Russian economy. "Of course, this it is a major oversight and blunder to arrange purchases of armaments from a country that was preparing for war and we assume that Serbian intelligence secured timely and accurate information on events in the East," the website said.