By Xhabir Deralla

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is meeting Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vučić on 8 August, with one of the reported topics being possible joint production of drones, potentially with investment from the United Arab Emirates. At first sight, several things in this story appear contradictory. In reality, they are just happening at the same time.

Serbia has made noticeable moves toward Ukraine while maintaining warm political, economic and strategic relations with Moscow. That does not mean Belgrade has suddenly changed camps. What we are witnessing is a genuine Serbian geopolitical repositioning, but not yet a strategic conversion of Aleksandar Vučić.

Kyiv knows the difference. Brussels knows it too.

Zelenskyy is nevertheless exploiting the opening because, from Ukraine’s point of view, moving Serbia even partially out of Moscow’s orbit is worth doing. His first official visit to Serbia since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine is therefore important not merely as a diplomatic event, but as another sign of a process that has been developing for some time.

The question is what that process actually represents: a gradual Serbian movement away from Moscow, a sophisticated continuation of Vučić’s multi-vector politics, or both at the same time.

Repositioning without conversion

To understand what is happening, we first need to get rid of one illusion: Serbia and Vučić are not suddenly “pro-Ukrainian”.

On 15 July in Kyiv, Vučić promised further humanitarian, financial, medical and energy assistance to Ukraine and support for reconstruction. He affirmed Ukraine’s territorial integrity and its European aspirations. But he did not sign the summit declaration calling for continued security assistance to Ukraine and stronger pressure on Russia.

That tells us almost everything about his method. Vučić is prepared to move substantially toward Ukraine – but only up to the point where that movement risks becoming an irreversible rupture with Moscow.

We have seen the same pattern before. At the Ukraine–Southeast Europe summit in 2025, Vučić went to Ukraine, which was already politically significant, but again kept his distance from language that would lock Serbia into a clear anti-Russian position.

So those who interpret the latest developments as a Serbian alignment with Ukraine are getting ahead of themselves. This is better described as a selective alignment with Ukraine inside a continuing Serbian multi-vector strategy. And that difference matters enormously.

Still, something real has changed.

Weapons follow markets, not necessarily alliances

Serbian-produced ammunition has been reaching Ukraine through Western intermediaries for years. In 2024, the Financial Times estimated the value at around €800 million, and Vučić himself indicated that this figure was broadly plausible.

Then something revealing happened. Moscow became angry. Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service publicly accused Serbia of betraying Russia by allowing Serbian ammunition to reach Ukraine through third countries. Vučić subsequently discussed the issue with Vladimir Putin, and in June 2025 Belgrade announced tighter political control over arms exports.

That episode matters because it showed that Moscow regarded Serbia’s Ukraine connection as sufficiently serious to confront Belgrade publicly.

This does not turn Vučić into an ally of Ukraine. But neither does it fit the description of Serbia as merely Russia’s obedient Balkan satellite. Something more complicated is happening.

The important fact is that Serbia has built a defence-export model in which political alignment and the identity of the eventual user can become secondary to markets, intermediaries and strategic leverage.

This tells us something important about the political economy behind the current rapprochement. Ukraine is entering a relationship with an arms-producing country whose defence industry has long operated through multiple markets and intermediaries, including states whose interests may be directly opposed to Ukraine’s.

In other words, ideology is one thing, business is another. And geopolitics often begins exactly there.

The strange importance of Christopher Hill

This is where the role of former U.S. ambassador to Serbia Christopher Hill becomes particularly interesting. In his interview for the German newspaper FAZ, as reported by EUalive.net, Hill describes something more than the fact that Washington is simply tolerating an existing Serbian arms trade. According to his account, U.S. diplomacy identified Serbian production capacity, matched it with urgent Ukrainian battlefield needs, supported purchases, monitored where Serbian weapons were going, and helped manage the political meaning of Serbia’s involvement.

In essence, Washington appears to have tried to turn Serbia’s transactional instincts into geopolitical leverage. The logic is fairly clear. Vučić did not need to become ideologically pro-Ukrainian for Serbia to become useful to Ukraine.

Serbia had ammunition. Ukraine desperately needed ammunition. Washington needed additional supply. Serbia wanted revenue, strategic importance and political credit. Interests intersected. Cooperation followed.

Hill appears to have understood that Serbian defence production could become one of the instruments gradually pulling Belgrade away from Moscow, without first demanding the politically expensive symbolic break represented by sanctions.

Create interests first. Demand alignment later. That is diplomacy. It is also risky. Because transactionalism works in both directions.

Washington’s position effectively means: “We do not require you to share all our policies as long as your behaviour produces strategically useful results.” The risk is that Vučić can apply exactly the same logic elsewhere.

And he does.

The uncomfortable democratic layer

There is another side to this strategy, and it may be the most uncomfortable one. The more strategically useful Vučić becomes, the more incentives Western governments acquire not to push him too hard.

If Serbia is useful for supplying Ukraine, potentially useful for defence-industrial cooperation, useful for regional stability – whatever that means to the Western centers of power – and increasingly important in wider geopolitical bargaining, Vučić becomes harder to treat merely as a problematic authoritarian leader.

We have seen versions of this Western approach in the Balkans before. Strategic usefulness begins to compete with democratic conditionality. Media freedom, institutional capture, corruption, political pressure, Russian influence and authoritarian tendencies can suddenly become matters to be “managed” rather than confronted.

That is why Hill’s phrase about putting Serbia on the “right side of history” deserves more serious examination than it usually gets.

Which Serbia are we talking about? The Serbia whose ammunition reaches Ukraine? The Serbia refusing to impose sanctions on Russia? The Serbia maintaining deep political and energy ties with Moscow? The Serbia participating in European institutions? The Serbia whose information environment remains heavily saturated with pro-Kremlin narratives? Or the Serbia pursuing an assertive, at times openly destabilising regional policy – most visibly toward Kosovo?

All of those Serbias can exist simultaneously under Vučić. That is his political technology.

When transactionalism becomes strategy

Ukraine almost certainly understands this contradiction. Zelenskyy does not need an ethical conversion in Belgrade. He needs ammunition, industrial capacity, drones, diplomatic support and fewer European states available to Moscow. This is wartime statecraft.

If Serbia can produce something Ukraine urgently needs, Kyiv would be strategically foolish to reject it simply because Vučić is transactional.

And here comes the paradox.

Vučić’s transactionalism – the same political method that allowed him to maintain simultaneous relations with Russia, China, the EU, the United States, the Gulf states and numerous defence customers – may now become the very mechanism through which the West gradually pulls Serbia away from Russia.

Not values. Not EU conditionality. Not sanctions alignment. Transactions. Yes, transactions.

Yet, this raises a larger question.

Was Christopher Hill implementing a strategy of converting Vučić’s transactional foreign policy from a liability into an instrument of geopolitical realignment? If so, the Serbian ammunition story becomes much more than an arms-export story.

Washington did not necessarily need Vučić to become anti-Russian. It needed cooperation with the West to become progressively more profitable – economically, diplomatically and strategically – than dependence on Russia.

Then come Serbian ammunition shipments reaching Ukraine. Then increasingly visible Ukraine–Serbia political contacts. Then Zelenskyy in Belgrade. Possibly Serbian-Ukrainian drone production. Possibly UAE financing. Pressure to reduce Russian control over Serbia’s strategic energy sector.

And eventually, perhaps, a Serbia whose material interests have moved westward before its political rhetoric has fully caught up. That is a recognizable geopolitical strategy. That is the world of today.

But there is another possible outcome

There is, however, a danger that should not be underestimated. This strategy may produce not a more Western Serbia, but simply a stronger Vučić.

If Vučić manages to become simultaneously useful to Kyiv, important to Washington, economically integrated with the EU, financed by Gulf partners, commercially connected with China and still capable of maintaining channels with Moscow, his bargaining power becomes extraordinary.

He can tell Brussels: Don’t pressure me too much, I am helping Ukraine. He can tell Washington: Don’t pressure me too much on domestic politics, I am strategically useful. He can tell Moscow: I have not sanctioned you. Serbia remains your friend. He can tell Serbian voters: Everyone needs Serbia because of my policy. And he can tell Kyiv: Whatever Serbia’s historical relationship with Russia, look at what we are actually doing for Ukraine.

That is not necessarily Serbia changing camps. It may simply be Vučić perfecting strategic transactionalism. And this is where the real question emerges.

Is the West successfully pulling Serbia away from Russia? Or is Vučić successfully convincing the West that his usefulness matters more than his alignment?

The uncomfortable answer is that both things may be happening simultaneously. That is the paradox.

Can Aleksandar Vučić be trusted?

Perhaps the better distinction is between trustworthiness and predictability. Vučić may actually be relatively predictable precisely because he is transactional. If the incentives are understood, much of his behaviour can be anticipated.

But predictability is not loyalty. And usefulness is not trustworthiness. Aleksandar Vučić can be expected to pursue his own interests with considerable consistency.

That is not the same thing as trust.

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