In the Balkan Peninsula, the Russian Federation is recruiting people to fight in the war against Ukraine, promising payments, Russian citizenship, and benefits.
This is stated in an investigation by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network BIRN.
Journalists spent four months in recruitment groups on Telegram and found out that they were recruiting Serbs from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia itself for the war against Ukraine.
Media outlets have identified two mercenaries who have been working with Russia as recruiters since 2014: Dejan Beric and Davor Savic. Beric is known for his popular YouTube and Telegram channels where he shares his combat experience. Savic is an experienced mercenary, a Russian military intelligence officer who previously fought in Syria.
During communication with recruiters in Telegram chats, mercenaries said that new recruits will receive an amount of €26 000 immediately after signing a one-year contract, and later will receive a monthly salary of approximately €2 250. Their training lasts two weeks.
Telegram had not responded to BIRN’s questions about the recruitment channels at the time of publication. However, the prosecutors’ offices in the Serbian cities of Belgrade and Ruma said they were investigating Beric’s case, the media reported.
Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia amended their criminal codes in 2014, banning their citizens from participating in fighting abroad after the rise of Islamic State terrorists prompted foreign nationals from around the world, including Balkan countries, to travel to the Middle East to fight.
Russian mercenaries in foreign countries
In the full-scale war against Ukraine, mercenaries from at least 48 countries are fighting on Russiaʼs side. In Moscow alone, more than 1 500 foreigners could be recruited into the Russian army from April 2023 to May 2024.
Currently, there are established facts of recruitment of citizens of Nepal and Somalia into the Russian army. The Russian Federation also recruited illegal migrants from the Finnish border into its army who were trying to get to the EU through Russia.
As for citizens of Nepal and India, some of them are already in captivity or have died. There are already videos on social networks with Africans as part of the Russian occupation forces in Ukraine.
The Kremlin also cooperates with the North Korean army — its soldiers are involved in fighting in the Kursk region.
In September 2023, a scheme to recruit mercenaries for the war in Ukraine on the side of the occupiers was exposed in Cuba.
In April 2025, Volodymyr Zelensky said that two Chinese citizens who fought as part of the Russian army were captured in the Donetsk region.
Author: Anastasia Zaikova
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