Serbia’s “brothers in arms” are fighting the Ukraine war for money and the “Mother Russia” they revere. But now they are complaining about the poor treatment they received in the Russian army.
Belgrade. Almost all of the men in combat fatigues were masked when they recorded their video message to Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin earlier this year. Only the man with a shaved head who introduced the dozen or so fellow campaigners as “volunteers from Serbia” showed his face openly. “We came to fight for Russia and the Russian people,” he complained, “And here we are treated as if we were drug addicts or alcoholics.”
Since 2014, Serbian mercenaries have been fighting for the “Russian cause” in Ukraine for money, but also for conviction: as in the Donbass war, Balkan state fighters in the Ukraine war are mostly recruited into extremist forces right-wing in Serbia. circles, in which the myth of the Serbian-Russian bond of brotherhood is particularly valued.