Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has categorically denied claims that Belgrade will provide Ukraine with MiG-29 fighter jets.
Vucic asserted that reports suggesting Serbia agreed to send its MiG-29 fighters to Ukraine via France are entirely false and fabricated.
Numerous media outlets in the Balkans have reported that the recent acquisition of 12 Rafale fighter jets from France involved Serbia trading 36 of its Russian-made jets, which would subsequently be transferred to Ukraine.
“We have 14 of ‘TwentyNines’ that have been refurbished, upgraded and operational,” Vucic stated on Wednesday, during a visit to a highway construction project in western Serbia.
“To give them to someone? Whoever says so is a liar and completely out of his mind,” he added. “It’s made up.”
Vucic emphasized that Serbia had previously lacked operational MiG-29s and had to utilize MiG-21s, which he described as “flying coffins,” for an air show in 2013. Six of these jets were donated by Russia in 2017 to compensate for losses incurred during the 1999 NATO attack.
Rumors suggesting Belgrade would transfer the MiGs to France are “yet another blatant lie,” Defense Minister Bratislav Gasic stated on Wednesday. “The MiGs that Serbia owns are Serbian, and we will never give them to anyone.”
Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandar Vulin, who met with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday in Vladivostok, labeled the MiG claim “an underhanded lie” intended to undermine relations between Belgrade and Moscow.
The rumor initially emerged last week following French President Emmanuel Macron’s visit to Belgrade. Most Balkan media outlets attributed it to former Russian lawmaker Elena Panina, who disseminated it on her Telegram channel.
Panina’s source was another Telegram channel, , which lacked its own source for the claim regarding the Serbian MiGs. Simultaneously, a post identical in form and content was on Ukrainian social media, where it was attributed to “reliable Ukrainians.”
The Serbian government adheres to a policy of military and political neutrality. While striving to join the EU, it has publicly rejected Brussels’ demand for recognition of its breakaway province of Kosovo as an independent ethnic Albanian state. Belgrade has also refused to impose sanctions on Moscow, despite considerable pressure from the US and EU. All but one of Serbia’s neighbors are NATO member states.