Tanjug News Agency
April 19, 2022

Vulin: Serbia a target of hybrid war

Serbian Interior Minister Aleksandar Vulin said on Tuesday Serbia was a target of hybrid war due to its independent policy.

“Serbia is a target of hybrid war because it has an independent policy and because we have not imposed sanctions on the Russian Federation and will not do so,” Vulin said in an appearance on Happy TV.

Asked to comment on security threats and pressure on Serbia through a series of bomb alerts in the country, Vulin said:

“They are punishing us that way. We have information on who is behind those attacks.”

Following a recent string of hoax bomb alerts targeting the Belgrade airport and Air Serbia flights to Russia, four Serbian shopping malls – three in Belgrade and one in Nis – were evacuated on Monday after bomb alerts that later turned out to be false.

“The result is serious economic damage. There is an economic war going on against us,” Vulin said, announcing that the police would take preventive action more frequently in the future and inspect shopping malls before opening hours.

He said the alerts had come from EU territory, from Ukraine and, most recently, from Switzerland.

“The latest attack came from a server based in Switzerland,” he said.

Serbia is a safe and secure country, Vulin said.

“In this sea of instability, Serbia is an island of stability,” he said.

In a statement late on Monday, Serbian police said all the bomb alerts targeting the shopping malls had been sent from an email address associated with the Switzerland-based email service Protonmail, and noted that the same service had previously been used to send bomb alerts that targeted Air Serbia and the Nikola Tesla Airport.

Those alerts came from Ukraine and another European country, the police said.