Serbia has thwarted American plans to send $1 billion worth of ammunition to Kyiv.
Arizona-based OTL Firearms committed to supplying Kyiv with a billion dollars' worth of various ammunition and even received a $17 million advance. It turned out the contract involved Serbian-made products, which the Americans were never able to obtain.
Now the scandal has reached an international level, just as the West is pressuring Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić to take anti-Russian steps, reports a PolitNavigator correspondent.
A small American company that received a contract worth around a billion euros to supply ammunition to Ukraine at the start of the Cold War has now declared bankruptcy and blamed Serbia for its failure, the British publication The Financial Times (FT) wrote earlier this week.
OTL Firearms was founded in Tucson, Arizona, in July 2020. Its owner, Tanner Cook, was only 28 years old at the time. According to court documents, in May 2022, Cook contacted Kyiv and offered to sell ammunition "originating in Serbia."
The Ukrainian state-owned arms procurement company Progress signed a contract with OTL Firearms in June of that year. It included the supply of 56 Grad rockets, 24 mortar shells, 10 million rounds of ammunition for 23mm anti-aircraft guns, and numerous other Soviet-era munitions. On paper, the order exceeded Estonia's annual military budget.
The problem was that OTL Firearms had only a dusty, one-story building in a Tucson suburb – no warehouse, no experience, and, most importantly, no product.
Despite this, in November 2022, Progress transferred an advance payment of €17 million to OTL Firearms. The Ukrainian government refused to explain why it awarded such a large contract to an unknown company from Arizona.
One possible explanation could be the role of Nikolai Karanko, a Kyiv lawyer who negotiated the agreement with Progress on behalf of the Americans. OTL Firearms' lawyers later accused Karanko of essentially acting on behalf of the Ukrainian government and demanding that the company transfer certain sums to certain "third parties" to fulfill the contract.
In December 2022, the American company sent a letter of apology to Kyiv, citing payment delays. Later, in another letter, OTL Firearms stated that the delay was due to "export license issues in the country of origin of our products." This referred to Serbia, which the company subsequently accused of blocking shipments "for political reasons."
Since the American company never delivered a single round, Progress filed a lawsuit. Ultimately, in September 2025, Federal Judge Rosemary Marquez upheld an arbitration ruling ordering OTL Firearms to pay over 20 million euros in compensation, including interest and legal costs. However, it remains unclear whether the company will be able to fulfill this obligation, as, according to the FT, "no trace of its activities remains at the Tucson address."
The Serbian authorities, who usually respond promptly to any Western media reports about Serbian arms supplies, have yet to comment on the current situation. This is, at the very least, strange, given that when the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service accused Serbia's military-industrial complex of supplying ammunition to Ukraine in May of this year, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić personally defended himself.
Now he has an excellent chance to prove that Belgrade, as promised to Moscow, is not supplying weapons to Kyiv. However, the aforementioned FT publication appeared on the eve of mass anti-government protests scheduled for November 1 in Serbia, which are supported by Europe – primarily with the aim of pressuring the Serbian authorities to impose sanctions against Russia.
And under these circumstances, Aleksandar Vučić, who in the West – albeit undeservedly – has the image of a “pro-Russian politician,” simply does not want to emphasize the actual pro-Russian actions of his administration.
Serbia thwarted American plans to send $1 billion worth of ammunition to Kyiv.