The public prosecution in North Macedonia is investigating two Macedonian citizens who participated in the war in Ukraine and are said to have fought for Russian paramilitary groups against Ukraine, one of whom was a member of the Wagner private army.
Prosecutors are prosecuting Macedonian nationals suspected of taking part in the war in Ukraine.
Participation in foreign conflicts constitutes a criminal offense in North Macedonia.
“As for the punishment provided for the criminal offense of ‘participation in a foreign army’, it can go up to four years”, it is stated in the response of the Public Prosecution to Radio Free Europe.
Until now, the Prosecutor’s Office and the police do not provide details on how many people from the country have gone to fight in Ukraine, nor if there are organizers who recruit fighters from North Macedonia.
The Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) in less than a month, has published notices about two people who participated on the Russian side in the war in Ukraine, and in them it is also mentioned that a Macedonian citizen has died in the fighting.
The latest is from December 23, where it is said that the police are prosecuting Macedonian citizens for participating in the Russian army in the military conflict in Ukraine.
It is about a 37-year-old man from Skopje (Lj.B.), who together with the deceased (T.Sh.), through the “Telegram” application, had applied for service in the Russian army.
According to the MIA, the suspects traveled to Russia in September of this year, where they signed an agreement with the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Donetsk People’s Republic, [which Russia considers part of it, but which is not recognized by any other country in the world], and had joined their military and paramilitary formations.
MIA: Online recruiter
After checking the house of the suspect (Lj.B.), the police found documents, tactical clothing and other items that, according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, confirm his involvement in the conflict. Two suspects have been placed under house arrest.
In the first case, published on November 30, it is said that a 28-year-old man (JK) traveled to Moscow in October in order to join the Russian army for a reward of 3.000 euros. Upon his return to the country, the Macedonian authorities arrested and indicted him.
According to the investigation (JK) had contacted a recruiter through the Internet and upon arrival in Russia he was asked to hand over his passport, after which he had to sign an agreement and be sent for training to fight in Ukraine.
The institutions have no answer whether these are isolated cases or it is about organized recruitment of fighters from the country to participate in the war in Ukraine.
The Ministry of Internal Affairs replied that together with the Prosecutor’s Office and other security and intelligence services, they are undertaking actions to verify the information on all persons who are suspected of being part of the paramilitary forces.
The National Coordinator for the Prevention of Violent Extremism and the Fight against Terrorism, Pavle Trajanov, refused to comment on the cases, who said that at present, even he does not have direct information from the Ministry of Internal Affairs regarding the number of people from the country participating. in the war in Ukraine.
In past years there have been cases of participation in foreign armies, including the war in Syria, for which the National Committee for Countering Violent Extremism and Terrorism has reported that over 140 North Macedonian citizens [excluding children] have traveled or attempted to travel to Syria or Iraq to join terrorist groups.
The conflict between Russia and Ukraine began over a decade ago, beginning with Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and escalating into a full-scale Russian invasion when tens of thousands of Russian soldiers crossed the Ukrainian border in February 2022.
Until now, no information has been published by the security services of North Macedonia about the participation of its citizens in this war. More cases have been recorded in countries such as Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro.
Some of the returnees from these countries testified that they had fought for units with different names, including units such as Volk, the Sudoplatov battalion, but also for the Russian private military group Wagner, which emerged from the shadows after Russian state media began praising it daily for its successes. its mercenaries in the invasion of Ukraine.
Wagner and the Balkans
Wagner is a private mercenary army founded in 2014 by Russian national Yevgeny Prigozhin, who was close to the Kremlin and died in August 2023 in an air accident with a private jet that crashed exactly two months after his unit organized an uprising against the authorities in Moscow. Prigozhin was previously called “Putin’s chef” because of the many contracts in that sector that his company had with the state.
The media in Serbia have written about Wagner’s ties to right-wing groups in the country that supported the Kremlin’s policies. Murals were also painted in Belgrade in support of this group.
After the start of Russia’s war in Ukraine, in February 2022, the Russian medium Russia Today Balkan published an announcement of Wagner recruiting potential volunteers, but at that time there was no confirmed information whether Wagner had recruited new fighters from Serbia.
Authorities in Serbia said they were investigating the cases, while concerns about Wagner’s efforts to recruit soldiers in Serbia and other countries were also expressed by the US State Department.
Links have also existed in the past. In March 2017, a Serbian citizen was sentenced to one year of suspended imprisonment for participating in the conflict in Ukraine, on the side of the Wagner group. This was one of 32 decisions Serbia took against fighters who fought in occupied parts of Ukraine.
The Wagner unit faces possible war crimes charges in Ukraine, Syria and other African states, and has been under European Union (EU) sanctions since December 2021 for human rights abuses in armed conflicts around the world. . It has also been blacklisted by the US since June 2017 due to its involvement in conflicts in eastern Ukraine.
Volk and the Redut network
In Serbia, there have been cases where Serbs have fought for other Russian groups, as happened in June 2023, when some of them returned from the war in Ukraine after fighting for the Russian Volk unit. Before that, they had been in short training at the ranges near Moscow.
The case of this group is evidence of the existence of a secret underground system that provides international cover for engagements from the Balkans on the front, and participation in Russia’s war against Ukraine.
Radio Free Europe managed to interview one of the fighters from Serbia, who was engaged as a mercenary, after he was guaranteed anonymity. His testimony provided a detailed description of his eight-month experience during 2022-2023.
Dragan – a known identity to REL – spent two months in training and another six months under contract to take part in the war in Ukraine, and provided REL journalists with documents and photographs that allowed him to confirm his story.
He was with other Serbian recruits for two months of training at the Alabino military training ground, west of Moscow, where he was commanded by a man who introduced himself as Dima and another, an alleged GRU officer, who introduced himself as Oleg.
Dragan said he received 110.000 rubles (about $1.215) in hand for each of the two months of training and about double that amount for each of the six months of the war in Ukraine.
Dragan estimated that during his stay in Alabino there were about 25 Serbs, and that there were supposed to be Serbs from Serbia, but also from the Serbian Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and even a Serb from France. Radio Free Europe was then unable to independently confirm this information.
Dragani said that he had “signed a six-month contract with a private military company in Dima and Oleg’s tent”, although he did not provide a copy of the contract or photos to Radio Free Europe.
“In the contract it could be seen that there was no connection with the Ministry of Defense of Russia, but that it was the private military company 000 Redut,” he declared.
Radio Free Europe’s investigative departments, Systema and Schemes, previously confirmed that Russia at the time was using a company called PMC Redut to recruit and send fighters to Ukraine.
Towards war after a short training
As Radio Free Europe revealed, in October 2023 the Volk unit was one of 20 formations fighting in Ukraine under the name Redut.
Dragan claimed that he had no objections to the two-month combat training process, which he said took place from 9:00 a.m. to 17:00 p.m., six days a week, and that after two months in Alabino, he was involved in the war in Ukraine in January 2023.
He fought in the battles near Lisichansk in the Luhansk region and near Avdivka in the Donetsk region.
Dragani also said that during his eight-month experience he counted about 70 other Serbs, and added that many of them were sent into battle with very little training and completely unprepared for war.
After six months in Ukraine, in June 2023, he said, he was disappointed by what he had seen in the Russian army.
“From my point of view, ‘business and corruption flourish’ and ‘Russians, as we Serbs imagine and consider them, exist in a very small percentage,'” he said.
Before returning to Serbia, Dragani obtained a false certificate claiming to have worked in construction. He was given a document saying he worked for a construction company in Moscow to protect himself in case Serbian border authorities became suspicious.
Sudoplatov battalion and Sova unit
Fighters from Serbia have joined the Russian forces in Ukraine through the battalion named Sudoplatov.
Radio Free Europe (REL) revealed details about two fighters with the code names “Sava” and “Dunav” who claim to have been part of this group and to have joined Russian forces in Ukraine.
The Sudoplatov Battalion was established in September 2022 as a pro-Russian volunteer unit operating in the south of Ukraine, in the territory of Zaporizhia, which is currently under Russian occupation.
The battalion’s name comes from Pavel Sudoplatov, a former member of the intelligence services of the Soviet Union (USSR) during Stalin’s rule, who participated in the liquidation of Ukrainian nationalists in the late 1930s.
Among the cases in Bosnia and Herzegovina that the media reported on was the Sova unit – this unit was fighting on the Russian side against Ukrainian forces in the east of the country.
The unit claimed to have been founded by Aleksandar Velimirovic from Banja Luka, formerly known as Ljubisha Božić. He wrote at the end of 2023 that the unit already had a hundred trained soldiers.
