Macedonians suspected of being in the Wagner group and with Russian forces in Ukraine

Prosecutors are prosecuting individuals suspected of having fought in the war in Ukraine, which is a criminal offense - "participation in a foreign army".

"The punishment for the criminal offense of participating in a foreign army can be at least four years," the public prosecutor's response to Radio Free Europe (RSE) states.

The prosecutor's office and the police are not providing details about how many people left the country to fight in Ukraine, nor whether there are organizers recruiting fighters in North Macedonia.

In less than a month, the Ministry of Internal Affairs published statements about two people who participated in the war in Ukraine on the Russian side, and in them it is mentioned that a Macedonian citizen died in the fighting.

The latest is from December 23, in which it is stated that the police are prosecuting Macedonian citizens for participating in the Russian army in the military conflict in Ukraine.

He worked for a 37-year-old man from Skopje (L.B.), who, together with the deceased (T.S.), applied for a competition for service in the Russian army through the "Telegram" application.

According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the two traveled to Russia in September of this year, where they signed a contract with the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the pro-Russian self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic in the occupied parts of Ukraine and joined their military and paramilitary formations.

 

Online recruiter

After searching the house of the suspect (LJ.B.), the police found documentation, tactical clothing and other items that the MUP says confirm his involvement. Both suspects were placed under house arrest.

In the first case published on November 30, it is alleged that a 28-year-old man (J.K.) went to Moscow in October with the intention of joining the Russian army with a monetary compensation of 3,000 euros. After his return to the country, the Macedonian authorities arrested him and filed criminal charges against him.

According to the investigation, (J.K.) contacted the recruiter via the Internet and upon arrival in Russia was asked to hand over his passport, after which he was supposed to sign a contract and be sent to combat training to fight in Ukraine.

There is no answer from the institutions as to whether these are isolated cases or the organized recruitment of fighters from the country to participate in the war in Ukraine.

 

The MUP briefly answered for RSE that they are undertaking activities with the Prosecutor's Office and other security-intelligence services to check data on all persons suspected of being part of paramilitary forces.

The national coordinator for the prevention of violent extremism and the fight against terrorism, Pavle Trajanov, did not want to comment on the cases, who told RSE that he currently does not have any original information from the MUP about how many people from the country are participating in the war in Ukraine.

In previous years, there have been cases of foreign military involvement in the war in Syria, for which the National Committee for Countering Violent Extremism and Terrorism announced that more than 140 North Macedonian nationals (without children) traveled or attempted to travel to Syria or Iraq to join terrorist groups.

The conflict between Russia and Ukraine has been ongoing for a decade, starting with the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and escalating into a full-scale Russian invasion when tens of thousands of Russian troops crossed the Ukrainian border in February 2022.

The security services of North Macedonia have so far not published information about the participation of citizens of that country in this war. There were more cases from other countries, such as Serbia, BiH and Montenegro.

Some of the returnees from these countries testified that they fought for units under different names, among others for the Volk unit, the Sudoplatov battalion, but also for the Russian private military group Wagner, which came out of the shadows after the Russian state media began to daily they praise the success of her mercenaries in the invasion.

 

Wagner and the Balkans

Wagner is a mercenary army founded in 2014 by Russian citizen Yevgeny Prigozhin, who was close to the Kremlin and died in August 2023 in the crash of a private plane, exactly two months after his squad organized a rebellion against the authorities in Moscow. Prigozhin was previously called "Putin's chef" because of the numerous catering contracts his company had with the state.

Media in Serbia wrote about Wagner's connections with right-wing groups in the country that supported the Kremlin's policies, and murals supporting Wagner were painted in Belgrade.

After the complete Russian invasion in February 2022, the Serbian-language portal Russia Today Balkan published an advertisement of Wagner for the recruitment of potential volunteers, but at the time there was no confirmed information whether any new fighters from Serbia had joined Wagner.

Authorities in Serbia said they were investigating the cases, and the US State Department expressed concern about Wagner's attempts to recruit soldiers in Serbia and other countries.

Earlier cases are also known: In March 2017, a Serbian citizen was sentenced to a one-year suspended sentence for fighting in Ukraine on the side of pro-Russian separatists within the Wagner group. This sentence was among 32 that Serbia handed down to fighters who fought in the occupied parts of Ukraine.

 

The Wagner unit faces possible war crimes charges in Ukraine, Syria and other African countries and has been under European Union (EU) sanctions since December 2021 for human rights abuses in armed conflicts around the world. She has also been blacklisted by the US since June 2017 for her involvement in the conflict in eastern Ukraine.

 

Volk and the Redut network

In Serbia, there have been cases of Serbs fighting for other Russian groups, such as in June 2023 when they returned from the war in Ukraine fighting for the Russian Volk unit after a short training at training grounds near Moscow.

As RSE's Balkan service wrote, the case of this group is proof of the existence of an underground system that provides international cover for engagements from the Balkans on the front and participation in Russia's war against Ukraine.

RSE then managed to interview one of the fighters from Serbia, who was hired as a mercenary, after he was guaranteed anonymity. His testimony provided a detailed account of his eight-month experience during 2022-2023.

"Dragan" spent two months in training and another six months under the contract to participate in the war in Ukraine, and he gave RSE journalists documents and photos that allowed them to confirm his story.

Dragan was then with other Serbian recruits on a two-month training at the Alabino military training ground, west of Moscow, which was commanded by a man who introduced himself as Dima and another alleged GRU officer, who introduced himself as Oleg.

Dragan said he received 110,000 rubles (about $1,215) in cash for each of the two months of training, and about twice that for each of the six months of fighting in Ukraine.

Dragan estimates that during his stay in Alabin there were about 25 Serbs and that there were allegedly Serbs from Serbia, but also from Republika Srpska in Bosnia and Herzegovina, from Montenegro, North Macedonia, and even one Serb from France. RSE could not independently confirm this information at the time.

Dragan said that he "signed a six-month contract with a private military company in Dima and Oleg's tent", although he did not provide RSE with a copy of the contract or a photo.

"You could see in the contract that it has nothing to do with the Ministry of Defense of Russia, but that it is the private military company OOO Redut," he told RSE.

The investigative newsrooms of RSE, Systema and Schemes previously confirmed that Russia used the PMC Redut company at the time to recruit and send fighters to Ukraine.

 

Sent to war after a short training

As RFE revealed in October 2023, the Volk unit was one of at least 20 formations fighting in Ukraine under the designation Redubt.

Dragan says he has no objections to the two-month combat training process, which he said lasted from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., six days a week, and that after two months in Alabin he joined the war in Ukraine in January 2023.

He fought in the battles near Lisichansk in Luhansk Oblast and Avdiyevka in Donetsk Oblast.

Dragan says that during his eight-month experience, he counted about 70 other Serbs, adding that many were sent into combat with far less training and completely unprepared for combat.

After six months in Ukraine, in June 2023, he says, he was disappointed by what he saw of the Russian army.

From my point of view, 'business and corruption are flourishing' and 'Russians, as we Serbs imagine and consider them, exist in a very small percentage', he says.

Before returning to Serbia, Dragan received a false certificate that he worked in construction. He was given a document stating that he worked for a Moscow company, to protect himself in case Serbian border officials became suspicious.

 

Sidoplatov Battalion and Sova Detachment

Fighters from Serbia joined the Russian forces in Ukraine through a battalion called Sudoplato.

RFE/RL has revealed details of two fighters codenamed "Sava" and Dunav" who they claim were part of this group and joined Russian forces in Ukraine.

The Sudoplatov Battalion was founded in September 2022 as a pro-Russian volunteer unit that operates in the south of Ukraine in the Zaporizhzhya area, which is currently under Russian occupation.

The battalion's name derives from Pavlo Sudoplatov, a former member of the Soviet Union's intelligence services during Stalin's rule, who participated in the liquidations of Ukrainian nationalists in the late 1930s.

Among the cases in Bosnia and Herzegovina reported by the media is the formation of the Sova detachment - a unit that fights on the Russian side against Ukrainian forces in the east of the country.

The squad, it is claimed, was formed by Aleksandar Velimirović from Banjaluka, who was previously called Ljubiša Božić. He wrote at the end of 2023 that the detachment already has a hundred trained soldiers.