May 3, 2024: Serbia is a small, landlocked country in southeastern Europe. The population is 6.6 million and there are 24,500 armed forces personnel. The defense budget is $1.5 billion a year. Serbs, Russians, and Ukrainians all speak Slavic languages. Serbians speak a South Slavic language while Ukrainians and Russians speak an East Slavic language and can understand each other, but Serbians cannot understand Ukrainian and Russian. On the other hand, Serbs and their immediate Croat and Bosnian neighbors speak such closely related languages they can understand each other, though their religions and alphabets are quite different. Serbs are mostly Orthodox Christian using the Cyrillic alphabet, Croats are mostly Roman Catholic using the Latin alphabet, and Bosnians are mostly Muslim using their own combination of the Cyrillic and Latin alphabets with many Arabic and Turkish loan words.

For centuries Serbia was a close ally of Russia and the Russians considered Serbia a friendly ally in the Balkans. That changed after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. Serbia was enthusiastically pro-Russian until Russia invaded Ukraine. After that the Serbian government and most of the Serbs backed Ukraine with only a minority supporting Russia. This shift in attitudes was immediate; with Serbia condemning the Russian invasion a month after it took place. Despite that, many Serbs would like to eventually resume their good relations with Russia, which will have to wait until Russia gets out of Ukraine. Meanwhile, Serbia has stopped buying weapons from Russia and has turned to NATO countries for arms. Serbia ordered twelve French Rafale fighter-bombers to replace its fourteen aging MiG-29s. Serbia is also the last operator of the 11-ton twinjet J-22 ground-attack aircraft. Serbia has 17 of these aircraft, which are over thirty years old and rarely flown because of their age. Serbia has also purchased 30 modern French helicopters to replace its elderly 25 Russian Mi-35s and Mi-8s. Serbia also has 18 Chinese and Israeli UAVs with twelve more on order from a Serbian company.

The Serbian army has 13,000 personnel and is equipped with 232 Serbian built M-84 tanks. These vehicles are Serbian variants of the Russian T-72. The M84s were produced in the 1990s and are beginning to show their age. The M-84AS1, a major upgrade was introduced in 2023 and Serbia ordered twelve and hopes it can afford to order more in the future. The M-84AS1 is considered far superior to the Russian T-72B3.