Interview: How Bosnia Can Help Sate Ukraine’s Shell Hunger
As Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine enters its third year, the importance of ammunition, particularly artillery shells, to both countries’ offensive and defensive efforts has never been more clearly underlined.
While the United States and European Union have both sought to ramp up production of artillery shells and purchased them from around the world to keep Ukrainian artillery batteries supplied, political indecision and time needed to refit production lines have resulted in deliveries falling short of pledges made, with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba saying that the city of Avdiivka could have been held if Ukraine “received all the artillery ammunition that we needed”.
To overcome these shortages in the medium term, the Czech Republic has announced that it will lead a European Union initiative to purchase shells from outside the EU, possibly expanding purchases from countries like South Korea and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Overt Defense had the opportunity to speak with political scientist Jasmin Mujanović on how Bosnia and Herzegovina’s military industry can meet the EU and Ukraine’s need for artillery shells. Jasmin is a political scientist and policy specialist of the Western Balkans. His most recent book, The Bosniaks: Nationhood After Genocide, received a paperback release in December 2023.
As an introduction to this topic, can you describe the current state of the Bosnian arms industry?
Bosnia and Herzegovina has, I would say, a surprisingly thriving defense industry. It’s very surprising because it’s not generally known as an economic powerhouse. Its defense industry dates to the Yugoslav period, where by some estimates, Bosnia and Herzegovina was producing something like 51% or so of the overall arms and munitions of the then Yugoslav armed forces, which at the time were the fourth largest in Europe. So, Bosnia at that time was producing everything from artillery, armor, but also even components for the Yugoslav Air Force and had significant military installations across the country.
In fact, Bosnia and Herzegovina was generally considered the center of Yugoslavia’s defense strategy in the event of a foreign invasion. Long story short, much of that defense industry was obviously devastated during the Bosnian War, but it began to recover. By the 2010s, it was really very much back on its legs, and since about the middle of the previous decade, it has begun to grow by leaps and bounds.
Since about 2020, for instance, virtually all of the defense firms in the country have been significantly expanding production and taking on significantly larger numbers of workers. Most of the defense industry in Bosnia and Herzegovina is concentrated in the Federation entity. There is a small number of firms also in the Republika Srpska entity.
But for the purposes of the question of Ukraine’s needs at this time, all of the relevant firms are located in the Federation entity. And these are firms that produce munitions and specifically large caliber artillery munitions, in particular 155mm shells, the NATO standard artillery caliber. You have at least two firms that are producing the shells sort of tutto completo, and then another two firms that are producing various components for these shells. You also have another company there, Igman, which does not produce artillery shells, but is producing large quantities of small arms munitions.
Bosnia and Herzegovina already has a very robust defense export industry, something like 80 percent of all of the products made by these various firms across Bosnia and Herzegovina are produced for the foreign market, and Bosnia exports weapons and munitions to 113 countries all over the world, including the United States and large numbers of NATO states. And the overall Bosnian defense industry is worth several hundred million dollars, potentially even in the billions, depending on how we want to count, which is very significant for a country that’s very small.
There were recent Saudi contracts with Igman with a total value of around 80 million convertible marks, or around 44 million US dollars. Is this Saudi sale part of an uptrend, or is it something that has held steady since the mid 2010s?
It’s a trend that is continuing to accelerate. Bosnia and Herzegovina’s military industry has been significantly increasing its output and foreign market shipments since all the chaos that followed the Arab Spring. The eruption of various conflicts across the Middle East obviously created a huge new market for defense contractors all over the world.
And then obviously Saudi Arabia’s direct involvement in places like Yemen and other parts of the Middle East also meant that that country in particular, and some of the other very wealthy Gulf states also have a growing defense demand. They have historically been some of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s best customers in this regard. Their spending has really helped elevate Bosnia and Herzegovina’s defense industry, and increasingly brought Bosnia’s defense industry into, shall we say, the interoperability space with NATO more broadly, because a lot of the stuff that the Gulf states are buying is defense materials that are of the highest caliber, of the highest international standards, and all that stuff is up to NATO code as it were.
But Bosnian arms and munitions, as I’ve mentioned, have already been found and spotted in Ukraine. The issue there is that because Bosnia and Herzegovina cannot directly export to Ukraine owing to a 2015 export ban that was orchestrated by secessionist forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina, those munitions that have already gone to Ukraine have been going through indirect channels. Now, my whole argument in all of this is that I think NATO and individual states within NATO can really help make that entire process much, much more efficient, so that we’re not having to rely on second and third hand quasi-grey market, quasi-black market channels, and that would obviously be in Ukraine’s favor.
It also comes down to the ability of the Bosnian military industry to surge production, so to speak, in response to added potential demand to meet Ukraine’s needs. There have been reports about how Romanian and Bulgarian arms companies have been very quietly adding shifts and ramping up exports of ammunition. How prepared is the Bosnian arms industry to do the same thing, should hypothetical orders start materializing?
So, from my sources, I am informed that a lot of this is already happening, and from all of the publicly available data, it certainly seems to be confirmed. All of these companies have been taking on significantly larger numbers of workers just over the last few months and sort of year, year and a half. All of these companies have been increasing their production. People on the ground have noticed a greater number of trucks and things coming and going from these factories.
So, obviously, production is stepping up. The challenge now is to further step this up through institutional support. The production is already happening, what is important at this juncture is to provide the capital injections that these companies need to step up their ability to produce even more. So, their ability to modernize their equipment, their ability to acquire new equipment, and their ability to take on still greater numbers of workers to increase this production. The expertise and the know-how is already there. A lot of the existing machinery is already there. The supplies are there. Bosnia and Herzegovina also has the advantage of the fact that actually a lot of the supplies needed, a lot of the materials needed for the production of these arms and munitions, they’re already available within Bosnia and Herzegovina because the country has a pretty thriving mining industry as well.
And then, of course, in comparison to a lot of Western Europe, Bosnia and Herzegovina has much lower labor costs. All of the potential really is there. What’s needed is the capital injection to make sure that this can ramp up to scale. And the more cash is injected, the longer and more stable contracts can be, right?
If these companies know that they’re going to receive a two or three-year contract from the United States or the United Kingdom or Germany or whoever, and it’s going to be for X thousands or X hundreds of shells per day that they can produce, then they can appropriately step up their production. It’s all a little bit ad hoc right now, which is not what Ukraine needs. Ukraine needs steady supplies of these munitions at this time, because that’s obviously critical for their war strategy. But it’s also required for industrial production in Bosnia and Herzegovina to have a three-year, five-year plan, whatever the case may be.
So, this is where I think we need to more earnestly make that transition from some of these ad hoc initiatives which are already happening, into a more kind of systematic engagement with the Bosnian defense industry.
It does remind me of what several American think tanks have been saying about needing a “demand signal” for American contractors to actually start ramping up production of various systems for other potential conflicts.
We saw this story where the Pentagon is willing to provide the funds to build three factories in the US that will be producing 30,000 shells per month. I don’t know why it’s taken this long for that to take place, but that’s fantastic. But then look, how long is it going to take those factories to get off the ground and produce shells? That’s the first question.
And the second question is what happens if in November, Donald Trump is reelected. In that sense, I think the political situation in the United States right now is pretty hairy and in fact, potentially even more volatile than, ironically enough, what we have in Bosnia and Herzegovina, at least as far as this, uh, defense production capacity is concerned. So in a sense, why not park some of that capital in places like Bosnia so that we can get that consistent production while the United States is ramping itself up to scale. Again, through my conversations with sources, a lot of this is already happening.
American defense contractors know about Bosnia’s defense industry. They are purchasing munitions, they are purchasing arms, others are doing so as well. It’s just a matter of getting production up to scale and getting that pipeline going to Ukraine. That’s what I’m saying. So I’m not trying to reinvent the wheel, I’m just trying to create a little bit of track for that wheel to go, that’s all.
How do you envision this happening? Would it be something like the previous American backfilling type contracts where they place an order for a certain amount of shells, while immediately shipping out that amount to the Ukrainians?
That is one definite possibility. The other possibility is that you would actually have, for instance, American, British or German defense firms themselves taking stakes or making partnerships with these defense firms to assist them in increasing production. But ultimately, yes, the actual sort of facilitation of these purchases would have to go through these, shall we say, third-party countries, right? So, Bosnia and Herzegovina cannot directly ship to Ukraine, but that’s realistically a relatively minor issue. You would have Bosnia sending these munitions to the United States, to the UK, to Germany, to France, whoever the relevant intermediaries are, and they would then be sending those shells onto Ukraine.
And as you point out, I mean, in the immediate sense, if there is a contract made where the British government requests Bosnia and Herzegovina to provide 40,000 shells, then they can already send whatever they have stockpiled right now. They can immediately send that to the Ukrainians, knowing the Bosnia and Herzegovina defense industry will then send an equivalent number to the United Kingdom within whatever the appropriate timeframe is, five, six months, eight months, whatever the case may be.
So, we do need NATO states to play the intermediary role, but this is largely in keeping with what the Czech Republic, in particular, has essentially proposed, right? The European Union and possibly NATO would use its funds and go to countries outside them like Bosnia and Herzegovina, South Korea and others to procure those shells.
So, the actual sort of financial arrangements can take various modalities. The issue, fundamentally, is that we want to make sure that we’re using those European Union and NATO funds to ultimately procure the munitions and arms necessary for Ukraine outside of the European community itself, which at this time, outside of the United States, is not producing what needs to be produced. A lot of the stuff that’s been transferred to the Ukrainians is already stuff that was stockpiled, and even there, there’s been a lot of foot dragging, with the exception of countries like Denmark, for instance, who are basically sending the Ukrainians everything they have in their barracks, and then obviously the Baltic states. What we need to do is step up the production of new munitions, and this, again, is where Bosnia and Herzegovina can be really, really vital.
On the topic of the Euro-Atlantic community, Bosnia is an EU candidate member. Would a contract to supply ammunition to Ukraine be a show of credibility by the EU towards Bosnia?
Absolutely. Bosnia and Herzegovina has one of the most complex political systems in the world. Everyone that follows Balkan politics knows this. People generally in the West are not used to hearing about Bosnia and Herzegovina as a good news story, as it were. Bosnians themselves are very, very aware of that. But yes, absolutely, this is an opportunity for both the EU and the NATO not just to really change the narrative about Bosnia, but really capitalize on the opportunities afforded by Bosnia and Herzegovina in this context. So yes, it would be a huge show of support by the European Union, but it would also be incredibly pragmatic and self-interested by the European Union. We all have a shared interest in making sure that Ukraine is able to rebuff further gains by the Russian aggressor.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine is the security issue in Europe today. So, there is absolutely a categorically shared interest here in making sure that Ukraine has the best possible means to defend itself and push back the Russians. And obviously, I think, in particular, for Bosnia, what’s important in this sense is that this would also then really contribute to its argument and to its aspirations specifically for membership in NATO. Bosnia and Herzegovina is a small country. Even if it meets the 2% GDP spending target, there’s going to be a lot of countries within NATO that are going to be a little bit skeptical about Bosnia joining the block.
But if a little country like Bosnia can come along and say, look, the thing that we can ultimately produce for the Atlantic community is munitions and arms, and what we just need in exchange is a little bit of initial venture capital, as it were, to bring our production up to scale.
There it is – that’s the strategic partnership. That’s the strategic vision that maybe 10 years down the road ultimately gets Bosnia and Herzegovina into NATO.
This is something that in many ways we’ve been sort of groping around for in the dark for many years – what’s the kind of argument for Bosnia from a strategic standpoint beyond, I don’t know, vague claims about, “yes, we want to integrate the whole of the Western Balkans”, and there’s a certain kind of emotional sympathy case owing to the events of the genocide and everything. But this is realpolitik. This is strategic interest, both for the West and for Bosnia and Herzegovina.
And so I think this is really where there’s a lot of traction on this issue. And obviously, the Ukrainians in this case, because of their desperate need, are going to recognize the potential benefits for themselves. The other aspect that’s relevant is that Bosnia and Herzegovina can also produce a lot of the sort of Soviet era calibers that the Ukrainians are still using. They’ve transitioned massively into NATO caliber munitions for obvious reasons, but there’s still a lot of hardware that they’re receiving from other parts of Eastern Europe which is still in Soviet-era calibers. Bosnia and Herzegovina can also produce ammunition for those because of the legacies of the Yugoslav period, which again gives it a production advantage in comparison to countries like France, for instance, which realistically can’t.
I was actually reading a leaflet advertising the Bosnian arms industry’s ability to manufacture munitions in both Western and Soviet calibers.
Bosnia and Herzegovina is very unique in that regard among significant arms manufacturers. And again for a country of its size, population, GDP and so on, Bosnia and Herzegovina is actually a surprisingly major arms producer.
You can go to the average gun shop in the United States, and you can probably find, at the very least, ammunition from Bosnia and Herzegovina on sale, or the guns that you can purchase will have components that were manufactured in Bosnia and Herzegovina. This industry already has global reach, it’s just a matter of us directing it towards the most strategically urgent places. And there’s none more urgent than Ukraine.
But ultimately, this is also something that could have huge global implications for our, shall we say, Western, geopolitical interests, right? So if we’re thinking about helping Taiwan, for instance, modernize its armed forces, and my understanding is, for instance, currently Taiwan, in particular, has a real need for munitions, this is again, a potential avenue using the same modality that we’re using with Ukraine. Bosnia-Herzegovina probably can’t export directly to Taiwan as Bosnia doesn’t recognize Taiwan. But we can, again, do it indirectly through countries like the United States, the UK, and others. It’s potentially also going to be relevant for Israel, because they’re going to be needing to source additional munitions in the coming months, especially if its war with Hamas drags out or if it spreads to other places in the Middle East.
In a sense, this methodology has multiple applications, even though the Ukrainian case right now is obviously the most urgent.
Returning to the political dimension, how does the Bosnian population perceive the Russian invasion, and what sort of support levels are there for ramping up over direct support like ammunition supplies?
If we’re just talking about raw numbers, the Bosnian population overwhelmingly has a negative view of the Russian Federation and their war effort in Ukraine.
Once you start looking at the ethnic demographics of the population, then you start to see some distinctions. Generally speaking, Bosnian Serbs have a pretty favorable view of Russia and their activities in Ukraine, while the Bosnian community has an overwhelmingly negative view. And that is largely the case with the Bosnian Croat community as well, though there are some pockets of support for the Russian Federation there as well.
The question of ramping up production, I think, is not so directly tied to views about Russia or Ukraine or what have you. It’s really an economic story for Bosnia and Herzegovina. Given that most of these, you know, factories are located in sort of smaller communities outside of the major economic centers, this is going to be a major boom in employment for these communities. So nobody is going to look twice as to why Igman or BNT or Binas or what have you are taking on an extra thousand or two thousand workers or, you know, “why is there all this auxiliary industry popping up around these firms?” That’s just going to be a good news story for Bosnia and Herzegovina in general.
We can have an ethical conversation about war profiteering and the likes. But I think at the end of the day, this is a bread and butter issue for Bosnia and Herzegovina, which has a population that has historically faced a pretty sticky form of unemployment among large segments of the population. This is something that would really, in a big way, bring back major manufacturing capacity to Bosnia and Herzegovina.
And so I think there would be overwhelming support for this. And look, we know this in part because this has been going on in Bosnia for a number of years, but not to the scale that it could be. And we’re very much having a conversation about scale here. Bosnia and Herzegovina has been producing arms for a host of international theaters in this regard for many years, and the Bosnian labor force is grateful for it, as it were.
Now it’s just a question of, given the geopolitical urgency of everything that’s going on in Ukraine, do we want to really bring it up to scale. Moreover, there is always the element of plausible deniability as Bosnia and Herzegovina will not be selling arms directly to Ukraine. As far as I’m concerned, that never needs to be made public or official. It never needs to be acknowledged.
The point is the United States and the UK and Germany for their own strategic interests have the desire to spend X amount of millions or X amount of billions of dollars vis-a-vis the Bosnian defense industry. Great. There we go. That’s sort of the story in its own right.
And for NATO, half a billion dollars invested in the Bosnian defense industry is nothing. That’s a statistical error. That’s a rounding error. But it could make a huge difference for Ukraine if what that results in is the production or the delivery of an extra 500 to 600 155 millimeter shells per day.
So how exactly can the secessionist elements of the SNSD (the ruling party of Republika Srpska) and HDZ (the Croatian Democratic Union of Bosnia and Herzegovina) be stopped from attempting to interfere with any potential deal being reached?
The easiest way to do this is basically just to say that, look, Bosnia and Herzegovina has 113 different countries that it’s already shipping munitions and weapons to. All we need to do is take those existing contracts and upgrade them to scale. The stuff that is already on the books, they can’t get off the books. They can’t obstruct what has already been signed into effect. And it’s much, much easier to upgrade and expand those contracts than it is to sign brand new ones.
I’m not suggesting that we first roll back the legislation that was passed in 2015 and get stuck in parliament. None of that is necessary. We just say, “Okay, Bosnia and Herzegovina already has export agreements with the United States, with the UK, Germany, Sweden, et cetera, et cetera. So let’s just take those existing agreements and, and expand and upgrade them.” That’s it. Now, are there potentially going to be some efforts by the SNSD to obstruct these?
Almost certainly. But again, if the political will is there, particularly that of the Atlantic community to tell people “This is just not going to fly. We have the capacity to deal with you either through the Office of the High Representative or otherwise, we’re not going to allow you to scuttle something that is an urgent geopolitical and strategic need for the Western community.”
So realistically speaking, this is actually a very minor issue. Now it’s probably going to play out in the Bosnian media and there’s going to be some hoopla, but that doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what it looks like in the tabloids, it doesn’t matter if Milorad Dodik (President of Republika Srpska and leader of the SNSD) takes to the stage and blows out his chest and all that stuff that he usually does, it doesn’t actually matter.
What matters is what’s already on the books. The capacities are there, just get those monies in there as fast as possible. If this actually takes off, you also have the possibility that outside investors take over some of these firms tutto completo. Most of these firms are owned at least 51% by the government of the Federation entity.
If somebody like Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, or Rolls Royce comes along and says ”we want to buy this firm outright”, that can probably also take place, and would definitely get Dodik out of the equation. But for the time being, the contracts are there. What’s needed is just additional cash injections.
This also brings us to the bear in the room, which would be the risk of Russian sabotage, like what’s believed to have happened in Bulgaria and the Czech Republic in the past decade.
The potential is obviously going to be there as the Russians are not going to be happy about this, but I generally take the view that anything that upsets the Russians is something we should be doing and accelerating even further.
That said, Bosnia and Herzegovina has a surprisingly professional and capable intelligence service that has a long standing relationship with the U.S. intelligence community and the UK intelligence community as well. The know-how is there.
And again, all of this is helping us bring Bosnia and Herzegovina into the interoperability fold of the NATO community. There would obviously need to be precautions taken, but that’s a relatively small risk given the circumstances.
Do you have any closing thoughts?
I’m aware of the fact that this is a little bit outside of the box, right? This is not generally how we think about Bosnia, and I know there’s going to be a lot of resistance in places like France, which is trying to secure a lot of this new funding for its own manufacturing industry.
But realistically speaking, if we’re talking about raw numbers, Bosnia and Herzegovina is not going to be taking food out of the mouths of French workers because 500 million euros or a billion euros going to Bosnia and Herzegovina is going to have a much, much, much bigger impact than a billion euros going to France in terms of labor costs, production abilities, et cetera, et cetera.
I’m not suggesting, and nobody’s suggesting that Bosnia and Herzegovina is going to outcompete France in the ability to produce the most modern and sophisticated defense systems. That’s not what’s happening. Bosnia and Herzegovina has the ability to produce shells needed for artillery, needed for mortars, needed for tanks. That’s what Bosnia and Herzegovina can do, and it can do it right now.
There’s enough defense contracts going around for everyone. The question is, is there the political will and the political vision in the West to make sure that this can be done? I’m very hopeful about the fact that the Czech Republic has taken the attitude that it has taken. I saw that Canada has pledged some $30 million to the Czech effort to procure munitions from third party countries. This is all very positive, this is exactly what we need to be doing.
I’m just saying, Bosnia is a lot closer than South Africa or South Korea to the front lines of Ukraine. Let’s go to what’s easiest for Europe to pull off at this time, and make sure that we can get this up to scale and then we can get this consistent so that the Ukrainians know that, look, at the very least they’re going to be getting whatever – 500, 600 shells from Bosnia a day. And then we won’t have the problems that we’ve been seeing recently with Avdiivka and other places.