A step toward a military alliance? Vucic and Orban sent a message to the region (and Serbs)
Following the triple memorandum of cooperation between Croatia, Albania and Kosovo, the Ministers of Serbia and Hungary’s Defense Ministers have signed a new plan for strategic cooperation.
Isolated in the EU, Orban spread the wings in the Balkans
Vucic also said he expects to meet with Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban soon. According to him, the project for the construction of a joint oil pipeline from Aldo (in Hungary) to Novi Sad will be completed in the third quarter, and work can begin in the fourth quarter of this year.
The Hungarian minister, in turn, called Serbia the most important military partner of Hungary outside NATO and the EU.
What is foreseen
With the ceremony in Belgrade, attended by President Vucic and the Chief of Serbian General Staff Milan Mosilovich, an existing agreement of 2023 is renewed, the current plans for which are signed each year.
Kosovo, Albania and Croatia make a military alliance
It includes plans to expand military exercises between the two countries, facilitating the possibility of moving people, means and equipment in the defense sphere on both sides of the border. The rules for these activities are determined a few years after an agreement has been reached that Serbia will take over part of the military equipment of a warehouse in Hungary, and in return will provide it for ammunition.
Belgrade and Budapest will also cooperate with the supply of weapons.
The text affects 79 activities, with the exercises with helicopters of polygons in Hungary and Serbia being particularly important. For comparison, the two countries have conducted 48 joint military activities in 2023. But in recent years, Serbia has maintained the NATO teaching moratorium, while the Alliance’s Western Balkan member states have strengthened cooperation and conduct more and more exercises with allied countries.
Nothing new in substance
The idea of signing some – not always specified – an agreement between Serbia and Hungary in the field of defense has been discussed in Serbian media in recent weeks after Albania, Croatia and Kosovo signed a statement to strengthen the defense partnership. At that time, the media was true to the authorities presented the idea of a Serbo-Hungarian military union in response to a declaration that must strengthen the defense interaction, but in which there are still many unknowns: at least Kosovo is not a member of NATO.
The Tripartite Albanian-Kosov-Croatian document adds great symbolic importance to the document, but there is nothing new in it, he continues. The idea is that the Serbian-Hungarian document looks like a counterweight, but such a development can only be talked about in the future.
« Authorities need to create the image of a counterweight towards Croats and Albanians, and this is the basis to convince power that special cooperation has been agreed now, » Radic says. However, there are no elements that leave room to talk about an union: at least because Hungary is a NATO member.
