Seven Days: Ukrainian Recalls Captivity at Hands of Bosnian Serb

Mykola had barely finished celebrating his birthday when he was taken away the next day by Russian forces almost immediately following their full-scale invasion of Ukraine in early 2022.

He spent a week in captivity.

“Seven days,” he said. “I live constantly with those days.”

“When they were taking me away, I realised that was it - that I was dead, that they were going to kill me,” Mykola told BIRN Bosnia and Herzegovina at his home in Fedorivka, a rural settlement some 80 kilometres north of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv.

More than four years later, Mykola finds himself a key witness in the milestone war crimes trial of Bosnian citizen Davor Savicic, the first Bosnian national to be charged in Ukraine with crimes committed while fighting alongside Russian forces. For security reasons, BIRN BiH is not using Mykola’s full name.

Savicic, a Bosnian Serb originally from Banovici, is one of roughly 200 people from the Balkans who have fought with the Russians in Ukraine; he is the first, however, to be tried for war crimes.

“Yes, that’s him,” Mykola said on being shown several photographs of Savicic. “He looks completely the same. It’s 100 per cent him.”

“He walked around the village handing out chocolates to children. He was saying: ‘I came from Serbia to liberate you.’”

Savicic, however, is being tried in absentia. The 46-year-old holds both Bosnian and Russian citizenship. There is no firm information on his whereabouts, though it is likely he is in Russia. A warrant for his arrest has been issued by Bosnian authorities. He did not respond to requests for comment sent to his social media accounts.

According to Mykola’s account, Savicic oversaw his captivity in a rat-infested pit, much of the time blindfolded and bound, fearing for his life.