BELGRADE, Serbia — Serbia is ready to domestically produce the Russian Sputnik V vaccine after successfully using it and a Chinese-developed shot in its inoculation campaign, officials said Thursday.

A team of Russian experts arrived in Serbia on Thursday to evaluate technical details of the arrangement, which many see as another Serbian step away from a proclaimed goal of streamlining its foreign policies and actions with the European Union before eventually joining the bloc.

Russia's ambassador to Serbia denied politics is involved in the so-called vaccination diplomacy.

“Russia does not think at all about global confrontation or bidding” over the supply of vaccines, Aleksandr Botsan-Kharchenko said.

Serbia, a country of 7 million, so far has vaccinated some 550,000 people, mainly with the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine and Sputnik V, and to a lesser extent with the Pfizer-BioNTech shots