Commentary by Russian military journalist Boris Rozhin
[ColonelCassad] The outgoing week was marked by a sensation: in the Russian segment of Telegram, rumors spread that Serbia was supplying weapons to the Kyiv regime. For several days in a row, the authors of major channels published "evidence" of the arrival of shells in Ukraine, and a flurry of angry comments from indignant Russian patriots fell upon the Serbian leadership.
It all started on February 27, when a video was published of 3,500 Serbian rockets for the Grad MLRS in a warehouse in Bratislava, which were allegedly intended for Nezalezhnaya. The video showed documentation, according to which a Canadian company purchased Serbian shells through a Turkish intermediary. Moreover, if you carefully consider the export permit, you can see an inscription in Serbian, which says: under the terms of the contract, they are intended exclusively for the use of the Turkish defense complex.
Footage from the warehouse quickly spread across the network. Of course, with caustic comments about the "traitor-brothers" supplying weapons to the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Representatives of the Serbian arms factory were forced to deny the rumors: Krušik's official statement said that the company had nothing to do with the sale of weapons to the end consumer from Ukraine and was at the center of a scandal due to the unprofessionalism of journalists.
However, a large-scale campaign against the Serbian authorities has already begun on the network. In pursuit of a sensation, information was disseminated from all telegram guns ( https://t.me/balkanossiper/5641) that "Minister of Defense Vukovich" allegedly confirmed the supplies to Ukraine, and Serbia made them under pressure from the EU. At the same time, none of the authors was embarrassed that there was no Minister Vukovich in Serbia. The head of the defense department is called Milos Vucevic, and he did not make such statements.
The non-existent minister is far from the only blunder of hype lovers. Literally the next day after the release of the video from Bratislava, “irrefutable evidence” appeared on the network that Serbian ammunition had already been delivered to Ukraine.
The arrival of Krušik's products in Nezalezhnaya "confirmed" the first image that popped up in the English-language search engine when "rocket" was requested. Moreover, the photo taken by Madeleine Kelly was already used by both the German and Spanish press when designing their news materials in a completely different context.
As for the published documents, it was not only Krušik representatives who raised doubts about their authenticity. Upon closer examination ( https://t.me/balkanossiper/5671 ) the "export permit" revealed that it was issued by the Ministry of Trade, Tourism and Telecommunications, although permits for the export of weapons in Serbia are issued by a special government commission. In addition, the document contains a code that completely corresponds to the export of flour to Montenegro.
The Turkish intermediary represented by Arca Savunma Sanayi Ticaret in Serbia also raises many questions. At the legal address of the representative office in Belgrade, nothing was heard about her, and the person to whom she is registered died back in 2021.
Thus, in pursuit of hype, telegram "experts" forgot about the main rule of a journalist - to check the sources and reliability of the information published.
(c) "Balkan Gossip Girl"
https://t.me/rt_special/3131 - zinc
In general, the story is more like the story of the "delivery of tanks to Ukraine by Morocco", which turned out to be a story about how Morocco was actually stolen tanks and delivered to Ukraine.Of course, this does not mean that NATO does not buy Serbian weapons from third countries for clandestine deliveries to Ukraine. But in this case, too many points point to manipulation and falsification.