<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Why are officials silent about this and why has Serbia decided to technically contribute to an operation that the United Nations rapporteur calls genocide?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Serbian president's vision for Serbia in 2030 is not just about robots announcing his speeches. At the time, he announced that military drones would also be produced in Serbia from the end of April in cooperation with a foreign partner, without going into details.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"We are soon opening the first factory of serious drones here in our country, when I say serious \u2013 very serious, the most serious in the world,\" said the President of Serbia on March 7 this year. Aleksandra Vucic<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n State institutions fell silent after that, but not investigative journalists. BIRN and Haretz discovered that this was a joint project between the state-run SDPR and the largest Israeli military company, Elbit Systems, which has been criticized worldwide for its role in Israeli operations across the Middle East.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The company sold advanced artillery systems and Hermes 900 unmanned combat drones to Serbia early last year, worth a total of $335 million. Another, much more valuable, contract was signed in August.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \"We had an indication of this deal, given that the news emerged that we had made a deal with 'Elbit' worth 1.6 billion dollars, which is a huge contract. There were mentions of various types of military equipment and there was a suspicion that there would eventually be some production. The documentation and the sources we spoke to only confirmed this story with certain details of what would essentially be produced,\" says the BIRN journalist. Sasha Dragojlo<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Two types of drones will be produced<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n BIRN and Haretz write that two types of drones will be produced \u2013 one short-range and the other long-range, which can fly at altitudes of over six kilometers. And they produce \u2013 death. Saleh from Lebanon was driving home where eight family members were waiting for him. Until the Israeli bombs fell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tears are falling from Saleh's eyes, and the arms manufacturers' pockets are dripping with it. The Israeli company Elbit is one of two companies criticized by the United Nations for profiting from genocide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFor Israeli companies like Elbit Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries, the ongoing genocide is a profitable venture. A 65 percent increase in Israeli military spending between 2023 and 2024, to $46.5 billion \u2013 one of the highest per capita in the world \u2013 has led to a sharp rise in their annual profits,\u201d the UN report said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They're rubbing their hands in Elbit<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Elbit is rubbing its hands and hoping that there will be an opportunity to make more money, because customers like to know that the product they are buying is proven to kill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cCustomers like to see that something is tested, battle-tested. So we know \u2013 we work with international customers and we expect demand to grow,\u201d says Elbit Systems\u2019 CFO Yakov Kagan<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One partner in the business of sowing death is Serbia \u2013 both as a buyer and a supplier. And it does so, as the United Nations rapporteur says, without the slightest shame.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \"Before the war, there was almost no serious cooperation, but after the war, war crimes and accusations of genocide, we practically became one of Israel's better allies,\" says Dragojlo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why is a small Balkan country siding with Israel in such a way despite the crimes being committed? A lecturer from London's King's College believes that this is a political purchase of the White House's silence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \"Since November 2024, the priority of all priorities of the ruling coalition in Serbia has been how to survive and how to remain in power. In this regard, they still hope to have an administration in Washington that will not comment on internal developments in Serbia.\"<\/p>\n\n\n\n \"It is evident that they are therefore prepared to cross some boundaries in the case of Israel and relations with the Trump administration that they were previously unwilling to cross,\" says a lecturer at the Department of War Studies at King's College London. Vuk Vuksanovic<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Serbia, he says, has so far hoped to achieve this through friendly ties with Trump's former envoy. Richard<\/strong> Grenelom<\/strong>. Plan B was to give the General Staff complex to the family of the American president. Grenell was left without a job, and the Trump hotel construction project was sold. Plan C remained \u2013 military and political cooperation with American allies \u2013 Israel.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Serbia has agreed to produce drones on its territory with Israeli military giant Elbit Systems, a company that has been criticized for years for its role in Israeli military operations in Gaza and the West Bank, BIRN and the Israeli newspaper Haretz have revealed in a joint investigation, N1 Belgrade reports.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":915065,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[532,863,533],"naslovna":[],"class_list":["post-955743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-region","tag-aleksandar-vucic","tag-dronovi","tag-srbija"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gradski.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/955743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gradski.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gradski.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gradski.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gradski.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=955743"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gradski.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/955743\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":955745,"href":"https:\/\/gradski.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/955743\/revisions\/955745"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gradski.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/915065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gradski.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=955743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gradski.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=955743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gradski.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=955743"},{"taxonomy":"naslovna","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gradski.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naslovna?post=955743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}