Belgrade has become Israel’s quiet ammunition lifeline and its newest manufacturing hub, just as a UN special rapporteur names Elbit Systems as a corporate beneficiary of what she calls the “economy of genocide”. At the heart of the relationship is a wanted political consultant who once ran Netanyahu’s election campaigns – and now advises President Aleksandar Vučić from a nondescript Belgrade office. This is the inside story of the weapons, the spyware, the spin and the fugitive who connects them all.
It was a crisp morning in early March when Aleksandar Vučić, Serbia’s president, made an announcement that few in the West noticed. Standing before reporters at a military unit in Belgrade, he declared that his country was about to leap into the future of warfare. “We will soon open the first factory of serious drones,” he said, “the most serious in the world.” With a foreign partner – whom he did not name – the plant would be ready within a month.
That partner, it soon emerged, was Israel’s largest defence contractor, Elbit Systems. What Vučić did not mention was the web of intrigue, criminal investigations and fugitive Israeli consultants that surrounded the deal. Nor did he disclose that the factory was designed in part to shield Israel’s most valuable drone – the Hermes 900 – from Iranian missiles, after Tehran’s air defences had reportedly inflicted devastating losses on the Israeli fleet.
At the centre of this web is a man named Yisrael “Srulik” Einhorn. A former Tel Aviv hipster turned political mastermind for Benjamin Netanyahu, Einhorn is now a wanted fugitive in Israel. He is suspected of taking money from Qatar to run a propaganda campaign, leaking classified military documents and intimidating a witness in Netanyahu’s corruption trial. Yet he lives freely in Belgrade, advising President Vučić from a nondescript consultancy called Insight Partners.
The factory deal is only the most visible element of a partnership that has, in the space of two years, transformed Serbia into Israel’s most dependable European supplier of artillery ammunition, the manufacturing base for its next generation of armed drones, and a willing customer for Israeli surveillance technology that has already been turned on Serbian journalists and activists. From the office of a pro‑regime think tank to the tarmac of an air force base, from the phone of a targeted journalist to the billboards of Broadway, the strange entanglement of Serbia and Israel is one of the most consequential strategic partnerships in Europe. This is the inside story of the weapons, the spin and the fugitive at the heart of it all.
The arsenal of the Balkans
For years, Serbia has been quietly modernising its armed forces at breakneck speed. Defence spending rose steadily from €1.27 billion in 2020 to €2.32 billion in 2024 – roughly 2.5 per cent of GDP, the highest share in the Western Balkans. Much of that money has gone to Israel. In early 2025, Serbia bought Elbit‑made PULS precision rocket artillery systems and Hermes 900 drones for approximately $335 million. Just months later, in August 2025, the two governments signed a $1.6 billion follow‑on deal for long‑range missiles, additional drones, electronic warfare suites and command‑and‑control systems, spread over five years.
But the relationship is not one‑way. Serbia has become an indispensable ammunition supplier to a country that much of Western Europe has shunned. After the October 2023 attacks, while other nations cancelled contracts and imposed de facto embargoes, Belgrade kept its shipments flowing. Official statistics from Serbia’s Central Statistical Office, published by the Serbian site Radar, show that Serbian arms exports to Israel soared from approximately €3 million in 2023 to €48 million in 2024, and then to €114 million in 2025 – a 42‑fold increase in just two years. In the first half of 2025 alone, Serbia exported approximately €55.5 million worth of ammunition to Israel – more than the entire total for 2024.
Serbian arms exports to Israel soared from €3 million in 2023 to €114 million in 2025 – a 42‑fold increase in just two years.
Flight‑tracking data reveals that 38 cargo flights delivered weapons to Israel’s Nevatim air force base in 2025, double the number in 2024. In the first three months of 2026, a further 17 ammunition flights were recorded. The majority of exports are handled by Yugoimport SDPR, Serbia’s state‑owned arms trader. But four other Serbian companies are also involved. According to Serbia’s Ministry of Trade and reporting by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN), Romaks, Ediber and Edepro have all participated in the export chain. Romaks and Ediber sold ammunition to Ta’as Ma’arachot – also known as IMI Systems – an Elbit Systems subsidiary that produces missiles and artillery shells.
The pace of these flights, and the apparent gap between official rhetoric and actual cargo movements, has become its own scandal. On 23 June 2025, with criticism mounting, President Vučić publicly announced a halt to all defence exports to Israel. Yet investigators tracking the air bridge documented at least one Boeing 747 cargo aircraft landing at Nevatim shortly after the announcement, and the official trade figures for the second half of 2025 confirm that shipments never truly stopped. UN human rights experts have since called for a halt to all weapons deliveries to Israel. The air bridge between Belgrade and Nevatim has remained open.
The continuation of these exports has carried fresh legal weight since January 2024, when the International Court of Justice ruled that allegations of genocide brought against Israel by South Africa were “plausible” and ordered provisional measures instructing Israel to prevent genocidal acts in Gaza. Critics inside and outside Serbia have argued that any state continuing to supply ammunition to Israel after that ruling risks future legal exposure under the Genocide Convention – a convention to which Serbia, as the legal successor to the former Yugoslavia, is bound.
An “economy of genocide”
That legal pressure intensified sharply in June 2025, when Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories, published a report titled From Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide. The report did something previous UN investigations had not: it moved past states and zeroed in on the corporate ecosystem sustaining the war.
Albanese argued that private corporations had become financially intertwined with military occupation and destruction, creating what she described as an economy of genocide. In a statement published by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, she did not mince words. While political leaders and governments shirk their obligations, she wrote, far too many corporate entities have profited from Israel’s economy of illegal occupation, apartheid and now genocide. “For some,” she added, “genocide is profitable.”
“For some, genocide is profitable.”Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur
Among the companies named was Elbit Systems – the same firm now preparing to open a drone factory on the western outskirts of Belgrade. For Israeli companies such as Elbit Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries, Albanese argued in the body of the report, the ongoing genocide had become a profitable venture. The accompanying statement warned that the complicity exposed by the report was, in her words, just the tip of the iceberg, and that ending it would require holding the private sector and its executives accountable.
Israel has rejected Albanese’s report and the broader genocide allegations, accusing the rapporteur of bias and insisting its operations against Hamas constitute legitimate self‑defence following the 7 October 2023 attacks. But the question Albanese’s report posed for Belgrade was sharper than any diplomatic complaint: how could a country that brands itself as a candidate for European Union membership continue to expand its commercial relationship with a company a UN expert had publicly identified as profiting from genocide?
The answer, judging by the events of the months that followed, was: by accelerating it.
A factory in the fields
The new drone factory in Šimanovci – an industrial zone 30 kilometres west of Belgrade – represents the logical culmination of this deepening military bond. According to documents obtained by BIRN and Israel’s Haaretz newspaper and published in April 2026, the plant will be a joint venture in which Elbit Systems holds a controlling 51 per cent stake, while Yugoimport SDPR owns the remaining 49 per cent.
It will produce two distinct categories of unmanned aerial vehicle. The first is a short‑range armed drone with rotary wings and heavy payload capacity – a class of weapon repeatedly deployed by Israel in densely populated arenas such as Gaza, the West Bank and southern Lebanon, where similar platforms have been used against both civilian infrastructure and militant targets. The second is a far more advanced long‑range combat and reconnaissance drone capable of operating at altitudes exceeding six kilometres, with the endurance and satellite link to enable strategic strikes deep inside Iran – and potentially against other states in the region that fall within the expanding orbit of Israel’s perceived security threats.
A source familiar with the deal described the long‑range drone as more advanced than Serbia’s domestic Pegasus model, with significantly higher flight altitude and greater operational autonomy. The same source called it “the crown of the entire project” and was unequivocal about Belgrade’s true motive. “The essence of the whole story is technology transfer,” the source said – a transfer that would, in time, allow Serbian engineers to design and produce comparable systems on their own. Engineers from UTVA, the Serbian aircraft manufacturer owned by SDPR, are expected to participate directly in development and production.
“The essence of the whole story is technology transfer.”Source familiar with the Elbit–SDPR project
The choice of location has already become a source of controversy. Several reports identified the site as a facility owned by the Pink Media Group, the sprawling media empire of Željko Mitrović, a pro‑government tycoon. But in an unusual move, Pink Media Group publicly denied the connection, calling the reports completely inaccurate. Neither Željko Mitrović nor the group, a press release insisted, has any connection with the project. SDPR itself did not respond to questions from BIRN, and Elbit Systems gave only a two‑word reply: “No comment.”
Vučić takes the podium
For months the Serbian government had refused to confirm what its president had hinted at on that crisp March morning. That changed on 14 April 2026, when Vučić abandoned ambiguity altogether. Speaking publicly, and in remarks subsequently reported by Reuters and the Associated Press, he confirmed that Serbia would jointly manufacture combat drones with Israel, and openly acknowledged the country’s technological dependence on Israeli expertise.
“We don’t know how to make drones as Israel does,” Vučić said. “We will be doing it together.” The new plant, he predicted, would give his country “the best drones in this part of the world”.
“We don’t know how to make drones as Israel does. We will be doing it together.”President Aleksandar Vučić, 14 April 2026
The president framed the deal as both a military and a technological leap, arguing that the partnership would deliver innovation and educate a domestic engineering corps for future weapons production. Reuters subsequently reported that he had instructed the Serbian armed forces to establish specialised armed drone units as part of a broader military modernisation programme, and predicted Serbian drone production would, in his words, “explode” in the year ahead.
Crucially, in the same set of remarks, Vučić made clear that the ammunition pipeline running in the opposite direction would not be interrupted. “They sell weapons to us, we sell weapons to them and this will continue,” he said, defending the relationship as a matter of basic reciprocity rather than strategic alignment. It was the first explicit on‑the‑record acknowledgement that the export halt announced ten months earlier had not, in any meaningful sense, taken effect.
For analysts who follow Belgrade’s foreign policy manoeuvres, the announcement was less a surprise than a confirmation. Vuk Vuksanović, a researcher at King’s College London, told BIRN that Serbia views Israel as both a source of advanced military technology and a potential political bridge toward Washington – what he described as a “shortcut to the White House”. In a Trump‑era Washington increasingly receptive to deals brokered by Israeli interlocutors, the calculation has its own grim logic. Serbia is expanding its military ties not only with Israel but with France and China, while officially maintaining military neutrality between NATO and Russia. The drone factory, in this reading, is not a side bet but a central pillar of Belgrade’s multipolar hedging strategy.
The spyware in your pocket
While drones and missiles travel in one direction, another Israeli technology has been deployed for a darker purpose inside Serbia’s own borders. In December 2024, Amnesty International published a devastating report titled A Digital Prison. It contained forensic evidence that Serbian authorities had used tools from the Israeli company Cellebrite to install spyware on the phones of a journalist and an environmental activist.
The malware, dubbed NoviSpy, allowed police to extract personal data, take screenshots, and remotely activate microphones and cameras. Amnesty found that Serbian police had used Cellebrite’s Universal Forensic Extraction Devices (UFEDs) to bypass Android security during routine interviews, secretly infecting devices that should have been protected. The surveillance campaign, allegedly orchestrated by Serbia’s Security Information Agency (BIA) and police forces, targeted individuals critical of the government. Activist Nikola Ristić and independent journalist Slaviša Milanov were among those whose phones were compromised during police detentions.
Cellebrite’s response was swift. On 25 February 2025, the Israeli company announced it was suspending the provision of its technology to “relevant customers” in Serbia. After reviewing the allegations brought forward by Amnesty’s December 2024 report, the company said, it had concluded that stopping the use of its products by those customers was the appropriate course of action. It was a rare admission of misuse, and a stark reminder that the flow of Israeli technology to Serbia is not always benign – nor confined to the battlefields of Gaza.
The rise and fall of Srulik Einhorn
To understand how all of these threads – drones, ammunition, spyware, spin – are woven together, you must follow the trail to a single man.
By 2024, Srulik Einhorn was celebrated as one of Israel’s most influential political operators. The Jerusalem Post named him number 42 on its list of the “50 Most Influential Jews”, describing him as the strategic mastermind behind Netanyahu’s success and one of Israel’s top political consultants. His career had begun far from politics. He was a former DJ, party planner and co‑founder of a digital agency that had worked with Heineken and SodaStream – a man once dubbed the darling of Tel Aviv’s hipster scene. But in 2019, he pivoted sharply, becoming chief creative director for Benjamin Netanyahu and helping the Likud party secure five electoral victories.
That same creativity, however, has landed him in deep trouble. Einhorn is now a suspect in two major Israeli scandals. The first, known as Qatargate, involves allegations that he and other Netanyahu associates took money from Qatar to run a pro‑Qatar public‑relations campaign for more than a year after the 7 October 2023 attacks – a relationship that critics say was particularly toxic given Qatar’s close ties to Hamas. The second, Bibileaks, concerns the suspected leaking of a classified Israeli Defence Force document to the German newspaper Bild, reportedly to influence public opinion on hostage negotiations and deflect pressure on Netanyahu. In addition, Einhorn has been officially charged with witness intimidation in a 2019 case in which Netanyahu is accused of bribery.
On 12 January 2026, Israeli police took the extraordinary step of formally declaring Einhorn a “fugitive criminal” and confirming that an active arrest warrant had been issued against him. They told the Rishon Lezion Magistrate’s Court that Einhorn was a suspect in the affair and was being investigated for offences of passing on confidential information; despite this, they said, he had avoided arriving in Israel and was a fugitive criminal.
The reason Einhorn can so easily avoid Israeli justice is that he is not in Israel. He is in Belgrade.
The consultant in Belgrade
According to a joint investigation by BIRN and Haaretz, Einhorn has been living in the Serbian capital for at least a year, and has served as an advisor to President Vučić since approximately 2020. In April 2023, he founded a consultancy firm called Insight Partners. Its registered address is the same as that of the Institute for Politics and Economy of Southeast Europe (IPESE), a pro‑regime think tank where Einhorn sits on the advisory board. IPESE is headed by Zoran Korać, a longtime Vučić adviser with close ties to Israel. Company filings show that Insight Partners generated $2.3 million in revenue in 2024.
In July 2025, two Israeli investigators travelled to Belgrade to question Einhorn. They met him for three days at the Supreme Public Prosecutor’s Office, but Serbian authorities requested that the proceedings be kept strictly confidential. The Israeli State Attorney’s Office has since told a court that it has been unable to extradite him. His co‑defendants – including Jonatan Urich, Netanyahu’s former chief aide – are left to face trial without him.
But Einhorn is not merely hiding in Serbia. He is working. And according to a leaked document that lay at the heart of the Qatargate scandal, he has been the architect of a sophisticated public‑relations campaign to rebrand Vučić as a global peacemaker.
How to sell a president
The document, originally a web file shared between Einhorn and Jonatan Urich in May 2022, was titled “Lighthouse Presentation May 22”. It was officially intended to improve Qatar’s image ahead of the 2022 World Cup, but its original content, written and then deleted, concerned Serbia. What it reveals is a detailed blueprint for reshaping how the West sees Vučić.
The plan had two overarching goals. The external goal was to significantly improve the image of President Vučić and Serbia among the current US administration, the Democratic Party, the media, and the liberal world in the United States and Europe. The internal goal was to preserve and strengthen the president’s international image among Serbian citizens and increase national support. The central message was to be this: that President Vučić had turned Serbia into a global crossroads of peace and prosperity between Russia, China, the EU, the US and the Gulf states.
“Hamilton is nice, but Serbia is the fastest growing economy in the Balkans.”Proposed Broadway billboard, leaked Lighthouse document
The tactics were anything but subtle. Einhorn proposed using web recommendation tools such as Taboola and Outbrain to push positive articles about Vučić to senior Democratic Party officials, State Department staff and US administration members. He planned to recruit “world‑renowned authors” to write flattering pieces, with some meeting the president in Serbia for interviews. He imagined billboards in Western capitals: on Broadway in New York – “Hamilton is nice, but Serbia is the fastest growing economy in the Balkans” – and in front of Galerie Lafayette in Paris – “Nice day in Paris, by the way, Serbia opened 50 startups last year.”
The campaign also targeted popular podcasts. The document listed Joe Rogan, Chris Anderson, Guy Raz and Ben Shapiro as desired platforms. And in a particularly striking proposal, Einhorn sketched out a four‑episode historical mini‑series about key events in Serbian history, to be narrated by Vučić himself, uploaded on YouTube and promoted with international PR.
At least some of this plan has been implemented. In March 2025, Vučić appeared on Donald Trump Jr’s podcast, where he described long‑running street protests in Serbia as a “colour revolution”. Trump Jr praised Serbia for embracing “the values of the MAGA movement”. In April 2025, Vučić was a guest on Mario Nawfal’s podcast, which has 2.1 million followers.
“Serbia shines through its president,” Einhorn himself wrote in a Jerusalem Post column in December 2023. The line was not journalism. It was a mission statement.
The fixer and the ammunition
Einhorn’s role, however, goes far beyond image management. According to a senior Israeli government official, he also acted as a go‑between to facilitate the passage of Serbian‑made ammunition through Montenegro, en route to Israel and its war in Gaza. In other words, the same man who crafted puff‑piece billboards and podcast appearances also helped open the logistical doors for the weapons pipeline that has made Serbia such a critical supplier to the Israeli military.
Political analyst Vujo Ilić sees a clear logic behind Vučić’s embrace of his fugitive Israeli adviser. Vučić, he argued, is playing a very careful game: he needs the West economically, but he also needs partners like Israel who will not lecture him on democracy. Einhorn, in Ilić’s view, is the perfect intermediary – a man who knows how to speak to both sides. Marketing expert Igor Avžner was blunter still, describing the messaging strategy as a form of psychological pressure. Russia, China, the United States and the EU all back the president, the implicit argument runs – so if they support him and ordinary Serbians do not, then clearly something is wrong with ordinary Serbians. That, Avžner suggested, is the essence of Vučić’s game.
A backlash without borders
If the architecture of the partnership is being built quietly in Belgrade, the political reaction to it is anything but quiet. The growing Serbia–Elbit relationship has dropped into the middle of a global campaign that has been gathering force across Britain, Germany, France, Australia and the United States, where activists accuse the Israeli arms manufacturer of profiting directly from the destruction of Gaza.
In Britain, the direct‑action group Palestine Action has repeatedly targeted Elbit‑linked facilities through occupations, blockades and protests. Sustained pressure has reportedly contributed to Elbit closing or selling several of its UK‑linked facilities after years of activism. In Germany during 2025 and 2026, demonstrators have protested against Elbit‑linked drone operations and military partnerships, arguing that European governments risk complicity in alleged war crimes through defence cooperation. Critics have long accused Elbit of commercially benefiting from the live battlefield deployment of its weapons systems – many of which the company itself markets internationally as “battle‑tested”.
That marketing language now sits at the very centre of Albanese’s UN report. It is, in effect, the commercial expression of what she called the “economy of genocide”: a business model in which the destruction inflicted in Gaza is itself the proof of concept for sales abroad. For her, the responsibility does not end with the executives who sign the contracts. Ending corporate complicity, she warned, would not happen without holding the private sector accountable, including its executives.
Inside Serbia, the backlash has taken a different but no less determined form. Throughout 2025 and into 2026, anti‑war activists, pro‑Palestinian organisations, investigative journalists, legal campaigners and opposition politicians have mounted a sustained challenge to the government’s chosen path. Public demonstrations against Serbian arms exports to Israel have unfolded in Belgrade with growing frequency, the Palestinian flag now a regular sight in the capital. One banner displayed during recent demonstrations read, simply: “Israel kills children, USA protects the killers.”
“Israel kills children, USA protects the killers.”Banner, Belgrade demonstration, 2025
Critics accuse Vučić of presenting Serbia internationally as a neutral peacemaker while materially supporting Israel through ammunition exports and an industrial partnership designed to last decades. The Elbit drone factory has triggered particularly fierce backlash because it permanently embeds Serbia inside the supply chain of a company a UN expert has publicly identified as profiting from genocide. Three questions have come to dominate the domestic argument: whether Serbia risks future legal exposure under the Genocide Convention; whether its EU accession ambitions can survive deeper integration with the Israeli arms industry; and whether the country is becoming, in effect, economically dependent on the export of wartime ammunition.
Albanese in Belgrade
The collision between the international campaign and Belgrade’s strategic calculus came to a head in March 2026, when Francesca Albanese herself travelled to the Serbian capital for a legal and human rights conference. From a podium in Belgrade, the UN rapporteur turned her criticism directly on her hosts. Serbia, she said, was collaborating with Israel “without shame”.
“Serbia is collaborating with Israel without shame.”Francesca Albanese, in Belgrade, March 2026
The remarks, widely interpreted as a warning that states continuing military cooperation with Israel during the Gaza war risked potential complicity under international law, drew an immediate and angry response. Officials in Belgrade condemned Albanese’s comments as “unacceptable interference in internal affairs” and accused the rapporteur of acting beyond her mandate. The substance of her allegation – that Serbian‑made weapons were being used in Gaza, and that Belgrade’s military relationship with Israel exposed Serbia to legal and moral risk – was not addressed.
The pattern is a familiar one in the Vučić era. International criticism is reframed as a violation of sovereignty; uncomfortable evidence is met with denunciation rather than rebuttal. But Albanese’s intervention was different in one important respect. It was not aimed at Serbia’s domestic record on democracy or media freedom, where the government has long perfected its defensive playbook. It was aimed at a specific, documented commercial relationship – one whose paper trail runs from a Belgrade trade ministry through cargo manifests at Nevatim air force base and into the boardroom of a company a UN expert had named as profiting from war.
A partnership of convenience
For Israel, the partnership is, on every measure, valuable. Serbia has provided a reliable ammunition supply line at a time when much of Western Europe has imposed de facto embargoes. The drone factory in Šimanovci embeds Israeli technology deep inside Europe, creating a manufacturing hub beyond the reach of future sanctions or supply‑chain disruptions. And Belgrade’s alignment with Jerusalem – including a 2020 commitment to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem – offers diplomatic cover for some of Israel’s most controversial policies. Although the embassy move has not yet been completed, the signal was unmistakable.
For Serbia, too, the calculation has been straightforward. Israel offers cutting‑edge military technology, an apparent shortcut to Washington, and a partner who will not lecture Belgrade on judicial independence, press freedom or the conduct of its president’s office. Einhorn, the man who once helped Netanyahu win five elections, has provided the connective tissue: a single advisor capable of brokering both an arms pipeline and a podcast booking, both a technology transfer and a Broadway billboard.
But the risks are accumulating. The ammunition pipeline has drawn sharp criticism from UN human rights experts and now sits in the cross‑hairs of an emerging international legal argument about corporate and state complicity in genocide. The spyware scandal has damaged Serbia’s reputation in Western capitals already sceptical of its democratic credentials. And the open presence in Belgrade of an Israeli fugitive from justice – advising a sitting president, drawing revenue from a registered consultancy, beyond the reach of his own country’s police – raises uncomfortable questions about the rule of law in both states.
Western officials have quietly expressed concern, but no one has yet moved to stop the flights. For now, the drones keep flying. The cargo planes keep landing. Albanese’s report sits on the shelves of foreign ministries and law faculties, waiting for a state somewhere to act on its conclusions. And Srulik Einhorn, the former DJ who once helped Netanyahu win five elections and now helps Vučić shape his image, continues his work from a nondescript office in Belgrade, beyond the reach of the Israeli police who want him behind bars.
In the Šimanovci industrial zone, workers are preparing for a factory opening. The machinery is not yet in place, but the deal is done. Serbia will soon assemble drones that can fly higher and farther than anything it has ever built before – drones whose long‑range variant, in the words of a source close to the project, is “the crown of the entire project”. The man who helped make it possible, wanted in his own country for leaking secrets and taking foreign money, remains free. And the air bridge between Belgrade and Nevatim shows no sign of closing.
