When Dragani and a group of his fellow Serbs arrived at Belgrade’s Nikola Tesla Airport in June 2023, they presented documents as evidence that they had been working abroad for a Russian construction company for months.
The truth, however, is very different: they were all returning home from the battlefields in Ukraine, where they had fought as part of the Russian assault unit “Wolf,” after undergoing short military training at a training center on the outskirts of Moscow.
This group is the latest testimony to a covert system that provides international protection for military services of people from the Balkans, who go to the front lines of Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine—a prolonged conflict that began with the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and later expanded with a full-scale invasion when tens of thousands of regular Russian forces were sent across the border in February 2022.
Although their photographs are often published (with faces covered) on Telegram, a platform quite popular among soldiers on both sides, there have been no reliable estimates of how many Serbs have fought alongside the Russians, and such volunteers are reluctant to speak, especially to Western journalists.
The Serbian Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Security and Information Agency (BIA) did not respond to Radio Free Europe’s questions about how many Serbian citizens are currently participating in the conflict.
However, RFE interviewed one of them about his time as a mercenary, after assuring him that his identity would be concealed and that his eight-month experience as a mercenary in 2022-2023 would not be published in detail. “Dragani,” who spent two months in training and six others fighting under contract in Ukraine, provided RFE journalists with documents and photographs that allowed them to verify his statements through independent sources.
Dragani’s story, marked by mistrust of dubious intermediaries and commanders, illustrates how Serbs, partly motivated by a “brotherly” desire, travel to Russia for hasty military training and to be sent to the battlefield. It also offers a clearer picture of the Serbs and other Balkan citizens in Ukraine, broken promises, and other reasons that led Dragani to decide not to return to Russia or the trenches.
“Human life is as valuable to them as it was during [Josef] Stalin’s time,” Dragani told RFE, using one of the most brutal and infamous Soviet dictators as a reference to describe his experience as a mercenary. “A big business in which ordinary people are killed—whether mobilized or paid, it hardly matters.”
Participation in foreign wars is a crime in Serbia, punishable by up to eight years in prison, as Serbia tightened its laws in 2015, and public warnings from Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić against participation in foreign wars have intensified since early 2022.
However, Serbia, which is a candidate state for EU membership, has also avoided joining the bloc’s sanctions against Russia and has maintained trade and diplomatic ties with Moscow. Surveys have shown that nearly half of Serbia’s 7 million population still views Russia as its main ally (far ahead of China), and the symbol “Z,” used to show support for Russia’s war against Ukraine, can be seen everywhere in Serbia.
An analysis of Serbian court records since 2014 shows that—despite official confirmation that hundreds of Serbs fought in Ukraine in the early years of the conflict—only 37 convictions have been issued for participation in the Ukrainian war and one for organizing participation in this conflict. Only six of these resulted in prison sentences, and only one person was sentenced to prison for involvement in activities after the escalation of the conflict in 2022. Currently, no one is being prosecuted for participating in foreign wars.
Dragani, who is in his 30s, has never been prosecuted, according to limited identification documents provided by the courts.
But he had traveled to Moscow in mid-November 2022 for training and to be sent to fight in Ukraine, based on plans he had agreed upon with another Serbian citizen, Dejan Beriq.
Beriq has remained outside Serbia since joining Russian forces in Ukraine in 2014 and has a “passport” issued by Russia-backed separatists in the occupied parts of Ukraine. He refers to himself only as a war reporter, but he has been investigated by Russian authorities for absence from participation in war. Beriq has never hidden and has welcomed Serbian fighters into the conflict since 2014. In a recent YouTube video—styled as a recruitment video—on September 13, he claimed he would embark on a trip across the country, as part of “Putin’s command.”
Beriq and a Bosnian Serb identified as Davor Savičić are linked to the Russian fighting unit named after Savičić, “Wolf,” which was established around the time the invasion began. Both have spoken openly, most recently last year, about recruiting Serbs for war, including through the notorious Wagner Group, despite the risk of prosecution by Serbian and Bosnian authorities.
Dragani said that while he believed Beriq would join him or direct him to other Serbian troops, he saw him in Ukraine twice when Beriq had gone there to make promotional videos.
He said he had seen Savičić, whom Bosnian authorities suspect of being a Wagner mercenary, in Avdiivka and Bakhmut, two Ukrainian cities that have been devastated by fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces.
Neither Beriq nor Savičić responded to questions RFE sent to their social media accounts.
Dragani had no previous military experience, apart from six months of compulsory military service. He told RFE that he had never been involved in nationalist groups or politically active. However, he was drawn by the opportunity “to help the brotherly Russian people” and the Russian passport that Beriq had promised him, which Dragani said he never received. He said he bought his own plane ticket from Moscow’s Vnukovo International Airport and traveled to Serbia via Turkey.
“Salary and money were never my motivation,” he said.
When asked about the payment part, Dragani said he received 110,000 rubles (about $1,215) in cash for each month he was in training. He trained for two months. Meanwhile, he received almost double that amount for the six months he fought in Ukraine. The average monthly salary at that time in Serbia was around $808.
Dragani said that at Vnukovo Airport in Moscow, a person who introduced himself as Dima, whom Dragani understood to be an officer of the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence service, accompanied him. RFE could not confirm Dima’s position. Dima took him to a snow-covered parking lot and was with him during a 45-minute trip in a white van.
“We traveled through a highway that passed through several populated areas. At one point, military checkpoints began to appear,” said Dragani. “Everything around us was military. The guards just stood and waved as they opened the barrier, without saying anything.”
RFE was able to confirm Dragani’s testimony regarding this trip and the photographs he provided, which he claimed were taken at the Alabino military training center, located west of Moscow. RFE compared details from Dragani’s photographs with images from Beriq’s videos from Alabino and confirmed that they were taken at the same location.
Dragani was sent to a tent with other young Serbian recruits, and during the next two months of training in Alabino, Dima and another presumed GRU officer, who introduced himself as Oleg, were responsible for them.
Dragani said that about 25 Serbs were with him in Alabino over the next eight weeks; five, he said, dropped out before completing the training. There were Serbs from Serbia, he said, but also from the Republika Srpska in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and even an ethnic Serb from France. RFE could not independently verify this information.
Dragani said he signed a six-month contract with a private military company in Dima’s and Oleg’s tent, although he could not provide a copy of the contract or a photograph of it. “The contract showed that it had nothing to do with the Russian Ministry of Defense but was a contract with the private military company, OOO Redut,” he told RFE. Previous RFE reports had confirmed that Russia was then using a company called PMC Redut to recruit and send fighters to Ukraine.
As RFE revealed in October 2023, the unit “Wolf” was one of at least 20 fighting formations in Ukraine under the banner of Redut.
Since then, partly as a result of the Kremlin’s humiliation experienced after Wagner’s chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin, organized a rebellion against the Russian defense leadership in June 2023, mercenaries contracted for Ukraine have signed direct contracts with the Russian Ministry of Defense and are considered to be under its orders.
Dragani said that monthly payments were delivered to him by a person using the nickname “Amur.” RFE’s research confirmed Amur’s connections to Redut and identified him as a commander of active mercenary forces in the occupied areas of Ukraine. The same investigation found that Amur had ordered those forces to gather individuals, interrogate them, and send them to “cells” before he personally interrogated and tortured the detainees.
Dragani said there were no complaints during the two-month military training process, which he said took place from 9 AM to 5 PM, six days a week.
He was part of a unit called the First Assault Diversionary Brigade “Wolves” and added that the group was trained by four instructors whom he claimed were members of the Russian army’s Special Operations Forces.
He and the other recruits were taught to shoot firearms, operate drones, provide first aid, and also participated in battle simulations and others.
After two months in Alabino, Dragani joined the fight in Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine. He fought in the towns of Soledar and Bakhmut and said his role was to infiltrate behind enemy lines and attack Ukrainian positions.
“Everything looked surreal. I wanted to go home every minute, but I was already in it,” he said, admitting he had no prior combat experience. “There was chaos, but we had orders to take positions—positions that were known to be guarded by Ukrainian forces.”
Dragani witnessed many colleagues from the Russian side being killed in those attacks and learned how to conduct himself when engaging with the enemy. He recounted that among the first casualties he witnessed was a young man with whom he had trained.
“We heard that he was killed while we were on the attack. I saw him just before the battle, and then he was gone,” he said.
Ultimately, Dragani felt that the situation was not sustainable. After finishing his contracted six-month period in Ukraine, he decided not to return to Russia and sought a way to go home.
But he was caught off guard by the reactions of his former colleagues. While Dragani and some of his fellow recruits decided to return to Serbia, others were given more time to finish the contract. They began to pressure Dragani, threatening him if he tried to return.
A few months later, Dragani received a message on social media from one of the men who had remained in Ukraine. He wrote to him in Russian: “They are starting to get rid of all the Serbs.”
His former colleague allegedly told him that Russian military authorities were furious over the recruitment and presence of Serbs on the front lines, and that the men were being detained and executed. Dragani claims he also received messages from several people, with photographs of men in uniform who were allegedly killed in the fighting in which he participated.
“People who thought they would come home were never allowed to return. In Ukraine, they are treated as expendable,” Dragani said, emphasizing that this was especially true for those who came from Serbia.
“I think the Serbs would fight for the Russians without realizing that it will cost them everything. At the end of the day, human life means nothing to the Russians,” he concluded.
