West can encourage Serbia to give Ukraine more weapons by 'leaking' documents – Defense Express expert Kyrychevskyi

Defense Express expert Ivan Kyrychevskyi said this on Espreso TV. 

“When the Serbian defense minister says that they allegedly did not supply anything, he can formally be responsible for a state-owned company. This is an analog of our Ukroboronprom. There is still a significant number of private companies there that owe no one anything,” he said.

Kyrychevskyi told a story about arms transfers that could have involved Serbia.

“If we recall stories with Serbian roots, we can recall the following. In the midst of Iranian drone strikes on our power system, it was publicly reported that our Territorial Defense, as part of mobile groups hunting for drones, received Yugoslavian-made Zastava M92 anti-aircraft guns,” the expert said.

According to him, from a formal point of view, only Serbia could sell them.

“There is one more thing: during the battles for Bakhmut in late fall, we spotted Yugoslav-made M-80 infantry fighting vehicles supplied to us by Slovenia. They sold us these vehicles formally in a non-operational state, and it took quite a long time to put them into service. Here we can also ask a conspiracy question – what if the vehicles were Serbian?” Kyrychevskyi added.

He suggests that perhaps the information about the arms transfer is being used by Western allies to encourage Serbia to sell something even more important.

“For example, 152-mm shells. Serbia has Soviet-caliber artillery and it is quite possible that it will supply it in the near future. It is quite possible that the armed cooperation between Ukraine and Serbia through third or fourth parties is actually wider than we can imagine,” the expert concluded.

• Reuters, referring to classified Pentagon documents, stated that Serbia had agreed to supply weapons to Ukraine. Defense Minister Miloš Vučević denied this information.