The journalists of the weekly NIN announced that the Ukrainian army in the fight with the Russian forces uses mortar mines that were produced in the Serbian weapons factory in 2018.
"The video posted on March 13 on the official YouTube channel of the Ministry of Defense Television of Ukraine shows mortar mines that were produced in Krušik in Valjevo in 2018," states NIN in a text published on March 31.
Krušik is a factory within the dedicated industry of Serbia that deals with the production of weapons, it is state-owned.
NIN journalists remind that in 2019, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić, commenting on the news that 60 mm mortar mines from Krušik were sold to Ukraine in 2016, stated that there was only one delivery.
According to NIN's analysis, since 2016, 23.500 mines have been delivered to Ukraine from the Krušik weapons factory.
Since at the beginning of March photos appeared on social networks and in the Russian media that allegedly show weapons produced in Serbia being used in the war in Ukraine, this information was denied to Radio Free Europe by the Ministry of Trade of Serbia.
That ministry is responsible for issuing export licenses for weapons and military equipment.
"The inspection of the database, as well as the data available to us, established the following - in the period from 2014 to 2021, there were no exports of weapons and military equipment to Ukraine," the Ministry of Trade stated on March 17 in a written response to an inquiry RSE.
As the Ministry claimed at the time, during that period no weapons were exported from Serbia to any other country, "where the end user would be Ukraine".
At the beginning of March, photos appeared on Russian portals purportedly showing Serbian-made mines being used in eastern Ukraine. The photos showed members of the so-called "Donetsk People's Republic" holding an unexploded mine in their hands.
On March 15, the Balkan Security Network portal stated that M70AB2 automatic rifles, manufactured at the "Zastava Oružje" factory in Kragujevac, in central Serbia, were allegedly seen in the footage from the Ukrainian battlefield.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine began on February 24, from several directions, from Russia and Belarus. Several cities in Ukraine have been bombarded for the second month of the war, and according to information from the United Nations (UN), more than four million people have fled the country so far.
Bonus video:
