The Serbs may have exaggerated the Serbian-Hungarian military cooperation, but Orbán doesn't seem to mind

It’s been ordered from the top to have an otherwise not too significant document, which would otherwise be handled at the level of department heads, signed at ministerial level – a government source told Telex, providing insight into the background of the news reported in the Serbian media on Tuesday.

As also reported by Transtelex, according to the Serbian news portal B92, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán have already entered the "serious phase" of establishing bilateral military cooperation. According to the Serbian press, this is Vučić's reaction to the fact that the defence ministers of Albania, Croatia and Kosovo signed a trilateral memorandum on defence cooperation in Tirana last week. The document aims to strengthen the defence capabilities of the three countries, increase the interoperability of their armed forces, combat hybrid threats and support the Euro-Atlantic integration of the region.

According to Telex's government source, the Serbs are trying to sell a bilateral cooperation plan as a military alliance, but it is in fact a far cry from that.

We found the content describing the aforementioned cooperation in a government decree from 2023. It would indeed be an exaggeration to interpret the "Decree on the proclamation of the Agreement between the Government of Hungary and the Government of the Republic of Serbia on enhanced cooperation at the strategic level in the field of defence" as a military alliance, as bilateral agreements of this kind are quite common in military diplomacy. Furthermore, it is clear from the text of the decree that the cooperation must not infringe on Hungary's obligations as a member of the EU and NATO.

The purpose of the agreement also appears to be primarily political. According to the text of the regulation, the cooperation was established to "further broaden and deepen the two countries’ defence cooperation based on mutual trust and shared values, in accordance with the principles laid down in the international treaties, in order to adapt to a rapidly changing security situation filled with new challenges".

According to Telex’s source, the bilateral cooperation plan is signed every year by the respective department heads, which is also when the annual programmes between the two countries are agreed upon. The current change, according to our information, is that the cooperation plan will be signed at ministerial level at the beginning of April, in order to give more political weight to the already existing agreement. This is primarily in the Serbs' interest, as they want to send a signal to the rest of the Balkans that they are not alone, but Orbán is also assisting in making the document appear stronger than it is, thus helping out his political ally Vučić.

The reason why news of a potential Serbian-Hungarian military alliance raised eyebrows is the fact that Hungary is a member of NATO, while Serbia has been quite visibly moving closer to Russia. So much so that Belgrade says they have been getting help from the Russian secret services in handling the protests which have been going on for several months in the country. Additionally, Orbán is not only an ally of Vučić, but also of the Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik, who is also pro-Russian. The relationship is so strong that when Dodik was recently sentenced in the first instance (for defying the orders of the top international envoy overseeing the peace process in the country) Orbán sent a detachment of 70 officers of the Hungarian special operations unit (TEK) to Bosnia. According to TEK, they were only taking part in a joint exercise, but even Dodik himself hinted that the members of the Hungarian unit had come in order to protect him. In any case, the appearance of TEK in the Bosnian Serb Republic even raised eyebrows with the new US administration.

Military cooperation between Serbia and Hungary – at the level of military diplomacy – has been ongoing for some time. In the spring of 2023, Viktor Orbán held talks with the Serbian president in Belgrade on enhancing co-operation between the two countries in the field of the defence industry. He was accompanied to the meeting by Minister of Defence Kristóf Szalay-Bobrovniczky, László Palkovics (as CEO of N7 National Defence Industrial Innovation Holding Zrt.) and József Kovács, the then State Secretary of the National State Secretariat for Information. Orbán and Vučić had already agreed at the time to take the Serbian-Hungarian cooperation in the field of defence industry and military development to a new level.

Shortly afterwards, László Hajnik, a former military intelligence officer and Deputy State Secretary for Defence Policy at the Ministry of Defence, also travelled to Belgrade where he met with Predrag Bandić, the Deputy Assistant Minister in charge of Defence Policy at the Serbian Ministry of Defence. It was then that it was formally decided to upgrade the bilateral defence and military cooperation to a strategic level.

Back in 2023, at a meeting between the extended Serbian and Hungarian governments, the decision was made to set up a task force dedicated to defence industry and acquisitions, which would operate alongside the already existing military cooperation. According to this agreement, Hungary will be selling its surplus military equipment to Serbia.

In March 2024, Colonel Nebojša Svjetlica, head of the International Military Cooperation Department of the Serbian Ministry of Defence, paid a visit to Budapest. At that time, the agreement between the two countries was already in force, and Colonel Svjetlica signed the cooperation plan on behalf of Serbia. According to our information, this is what will now, a year later be signed at a ministerial level.

The political importance of the military cooperation between the two countries is also reflected by the fact that last April, when the Serbian State Secretary for Defence, Nemanja Starovic visited Budapest, he participated in the CPAC Hungary event. In his speech, he criticised globalisation and said that the people of Western Europe are now experiencing an undemocratic liberalism. He also pointed out that migration and "wokeism" are a problem for Serbia as well, and said that this ideology completely ignores reality.