The Serbian government has decided to freeze joint military exercises with other countries. This was announced by the Minister of Defense of Serbia, Aleksandar Vulin, TASS writes.
“In the current period, we will not participate in any exercises or military activities with either NATO, the CSTO, or Russia, the United States, China, the EU – neither the East nor the West,” the minister said.
According to Vulin, the EU demanded that Belgrade abandon the exercises with Belarus.
It was planned that the Serbian military would take part in the Belarusian-Russian-Serbian exercises “Slavic Brotherhood 2020”, which will be held from September 10 to 15 at the Brest training ground. According to the Ministry of Defense of Belarus, a total of 1.5 thousand servicemen were to take part in the exercises.Russian and Belarusian troops expected to start military drills in Belarus without Serbian troops.
“Slavic Brotherhood 2020” is expected to run on the territory of Belarus Sept 10-15. The Slavic Brotherhood drills traditionally involve troops from Russia, Serbia and Belarus but Serbia decided yesterday to suspend “all joint international military exercises for the next six months”. The maneuvers with the troops from the three countries were held for the first time in Russia in 2015. They were subsequently conducted in Serbia in November 2016 and in Belarus in June 2017. In 2018, the Slavic Brotherhood exercise was held in Russia again.
