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| - Serbia donated 10,000 doses of Covid-19 vaccines to neighbouring Bosnia on Tuesday in its latest effort to aid Balkan neighbours who are struggling to secure them. Like other poor countries in the Western Balkans, Bosnia has yet to receive the jabs it was promised through the Covax scheme, a global vaccine-sharing effort that has been hit by delays. To date, local authorities have only been able to procure some 22,000 doses of the Russian-made Sputnik V vaccine, which is being doled out in the country's Serb-dominated half, Republika Srpska. The new batch from Serbia of 10,000 doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine will be distributed in the country's other post-war entity, the Croat-Muslim federation, which includes the capital Sarajevo. "I am happy if we can save five, ten or twenty lives in this way," Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, who travelled to Sarajevo to hand deliver the shipment, said at the airport. The populist Serbian president railed against Brussels, accusing the EU of leaving the region -- whose countries are in various stages of trying to join the bloc -- behind in its vaccination rollout two months ago. "We expected the EU vaccines and we didn't get them. Did you in Sarajevo receive them? No, none," he said. Serbia has moved quickly to order vaccines directly from suppliers, mainly from key allies China and Russia. Thanks to large quantities of China's Sinopharm jab, the country of seven million has now outpaced much of the EU by administering nearly 1.5 million doses so far, including two shots for around 530,000 people. Vucic has seized the opportunity to blast the EU -- a popular punching bag for populists in the region -- and boost Serbia's standing by also recently donating first batches of vaccines to neighbouring North Macedonia and Montenegro. While Vucic has close ties with Bosnia's nationalist Serb leader Milorad Dodik, the relationship with leaders from Bosnia's Croat and Muslim communities is still frosty a quarter century after the 1990s wars that unravelled the former Yugoslavia. "In a situation where global and multilateral vaccine supply mechanisms have failed, President Vucic sent this offer. We accepted it and I thank him," said the Bosnian Muslim member of the presidency, Sefik Dzaferovic. With more than 5,100 deaths from Covid-19 among its country of 3.5 million, Bosnia is home to one of the world's highest per capita mortality rates from the virus. rus/ssm/mjs
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