It is not easy to be a Serb in Russian installations on the battlefields of Ukraine, because the Russians send them without ammunition to the most difficult operations, and if they rebel, they are brutally tortured, accused of espionage and even chauvinistically insulted that they are Gypsies.
This is not Ukrainian or Croatian propaganda, but such treatment was reported by Serbian sniper Dejan Berić, who is recruiting Serbs into the Russian army. Berić decided to publicly complain about the command of the 119th Parachute Regiment, in which foreign mercenaries serve, and he spoke about it in a message he published on social networks, and the video was drawn to the attention of the Russian service of the BBC, writes Jutarnji.hr.
Dejan Berić is one of the most famous Balkan mercenaries who has been fighting on the side of rebel Russians from the Donetsk and Lugansk regions since 2014. He is a convinced Russophile who recruits Serbs into the Russian army, among other things, through his YouTube channel with more than 100 subscribers, and recently he was a member of an initiative group of voters that supported Vladimir Putin's candidacy for the presidential elections in March this year. And when such a Putinite decides to complain about how the Russians treat the Serbs horribly, it means that he is on fire.
The fact that Russia is trying to recruit several hundred Serbs into its army was first reported in August by the French publisher Intelligence Online. Serbian citizen Davor Savičić, who formed a platoon of Serbs in PMC Wagner in 2014, is participating in the recruitment.
In 2016, Fontanka wrote that Davor Savičić, call sign Wolf, was an "old friend" of PMC commander Dmitry Utkin, who together with Yevgeny Prigozhin organized the Wagner Rebellion against Putin, and then both died in a plane "accident". It is assumed that around a hundred Serbian volunteers are part of the Russian troops, and Berić played an important role in their recruitment.
They did not receive equipment and weapons
Recruited Serbs are fighting in the "Wolf" unit, which is part of the Ryazan 119th landing regiment, Berić announced. But, according to him, the command of the regiment treats Serbian mercenaries "like cattle", calls them "Gypsies" and asks why they came to fight in Ukraine.
Berić claims that the command did not allow sick Serbs to go for treatment, and sometimes they did not receive military equipment and weapons. Thus, at the end of December 2023, the command of the 119th regiment ordered Serbian mercenaries to attack the positions of the Ukrainian armed forces, giving them only "two or three rounds of ammunition" for machine guns. In response to requests for additional weapons, the commander, according to Berić, said that the remaining weapons would be captured by the Serbs in battle.
After that, the Serbian mercenaries refused to fight in the 119th regiment and asked to be transferred. This enraged the Russians, so the Serbs, including those who fell ill, were declared war criminals, thrown out of their dugouts into the cold, and kept on the streets for several days without food or water. According to Berić, the Russian commanders also tried to force the mercenaries to attack by threats of "beatings, shooting and imprisonment".
Military police visit
The climax came when, on the morning of January 8, representatives of the military police came to the Serbs and asked them to sign that they were spies. "Military police came to them this morning, entered the dugout, shot in the air, beat the soldiers with butts, smashed some of their heads. I fear for the lives of these people. The command of the 119th regiment is an organized criminal group," said Berić, accusing the regiment's commanders of working against the Russian army.
On his VK Telegram channel, he first wrote on Monday at 8:XNUMX a.m.: "Not a good morning friends. Watch the video and post again." In the aforementioned video, there are a dozen masked soldiers complaining about their position in the Russian troops.
A little while later, he sent another message that read: "I understand that I will probably be put in jail later, but this could save the lives of our soldiers," followed by another message shortly after:
"That's how it started, but I'm afraid it will end up killing our soldiers,"
Berić added that he appealed to the military prosecutor's office of Donetsk and the administration of the head of Chechnya to have the Serbs transferred to the Akhmat detachment, but "someone from the 119th regiment does not want to end it well."
The Serbian sniper announced this with the explanation that he hopes that the information about the situation with the Serbs will reach the Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Minister of Defense, Sergei Shoigu. In the end, Berić concluded that after the publication of these videos, he could be prosecuted under the article "discrediting" the army.
Bonus video:
