Serbia’s Interior Ministry said that planes from the European Union are not available to help fight the fires, so Moscow has been asked for help, Reuters reports.
A Russian Emergency Situations Ministry IL-76P plane landed in the southern Serbian city of Nis on the evening of the 19th of August and was already used on the 20th of August to put out the flames in the Deliblatska Pescara protected area, where the fire has been raging for weeks.
Serbia is not an EU member state, but it has access to emergency assistance under the bloc’s Civil Protection Mechanism. This summer, Belgrade also sent its own plane and firefighting team to fight fires in Spain, but the EU’s resources have been depleted by the severe and widespread fires and cannot respond with assistance.
Luka Kausik, head of the Serbian Interior Ministry’s Emergency Department, said the Russian plane would significantly increase its ability to fight the flames, as EU planes were unavailable.
Meanwhile, a European Commission spokesman said
Serbia had not yet activated the Civil Protection Mechanism and the bloc would mobilise assistance
according to Belgrade’s needs. He told Reuters he could confirm that Europe was ready to support Serbia with the means and equipment appropriate to its situation. The EC spokesman also stressed that as long as Russia continued its unprovoked and unjustified aggressive military action in Ukraine, there could be no question of normalisation of relations.
Russian planes are banned from flying through EU airspace, with the exception of humanitarian aid vehicles. At Belgrade’s request, the Russian plane flew through the airspace of EU and NATO member Bulgaria on its way to Serbia.
The arrival of the firefighting plane in Serbia is another sign of how Belgrade wants to maintain relations with both Russia, with which it has a historical connection, and the EU, which it wants to join. In August, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited Belgrade, but Serbia has not joined the sanctions against Moscow.
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