Soon after Russia’s deal with France to buy assault ship technology, Russia is looking to do a deal with Serbia to modernise their army and defence capabilities.

Via Pravda :

Serbia may become one of the largest buyers of Russian arms. This can become possible after Vladimir Putin’s recent visit to the country. Belgrade may receive a ten-billion-dollar loan soon. Three billion dollars of the amount will be spent to modernize outdated Soviet arms and purchase state-of-the-art Russian arms.

Something like a mafia loan then where you immediately agree to spend some of the loan at the “family” store?

Apart from the obvious attempts by Russia to gain influence in the troubled state and flog a few arms on the side, there is always the opportunity to annoy NATO in the process which is probably more their intention :

Will NATO let Serbia rearm the army at all? The administration of the alliance previously announced the intention to cut the Serbian armed forces to 21,000 men.

Viktor Litovkin, an observer with Independent Military Survey newspaper said in an interview with Pravda.Ru that NATO would not impede Serbia’s initiative to rearm its armed forces with the use of Russian arms. Belgrade wants to join the alliance, but the possession of Russian hardware did not become an obstacle for other countries of Europe in obtaining NATO membership. Take a look at Greece, for example. This country is a member of NATO, but it still buys S-300 systems from Russia,” the experts said.

Elena Guskova, an expert for Balkans, does not share the same point of view.

“It is quite doubtful that the EU and the USA would welcome such a deal. They do not conceal their plans to separate Serbia from Russia as much as possible. Many Serbs believe that their problems have not been solved. Many conflict areas remained in Serbia after the collapse of Yugoslavia. There’s every reason to believe that NATO will not be able to defend Serbia in case a serious conflict occurs in the north or in the south of the country. It happened so in Macedonia in 2001. The alliance simply took the side of the Albanians as it happened two years earlier with Kosovo,” the expert said.