At the Serbian military cemetery in Visegrad today, a memorial service will be held for volunteers from Russia who died during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) in the units of the Army of the Republika Srpska (VRS), and the event will be attended by representatives of the authorities and associations that maintain Serbian-Russian ties and gather ex-combatants.
The president of the Serbian-Russian Community ‘Zavet’ Association, Savo Cvijetinovic, said in an interview that there are 37 names of fallen volunteers on the monument in Visegrad and that in terms of organizing events as part of the Day of Russian Volunteers, nothing has changed compared to previous years.
“There will be people from the ministry, associations, and veterans organizations. There will be a memorial service at 11 a.m., and the memorial service will last 15-20 minutes. There is no other program,” said Cvijetinovic.
According to the announcement published on the website of the Municipality of Visegrad, an official address is planned at 11:30.
When asked whether the families of the volunteers will be present in Visegrad, Cvijetinovic said that he assumed they would not, given the war in Ukraine and problems with travel tickets.
Previously, it was mentioned about the connections of certain officials in the RS and the “Zavet” organization with the Union of Donbas Volunteers (UDV) and the ultra-right political party LDPR. The presidents of the UDV and the LDPR were previously put on the list of the United States (U.S.) and the European Union (EU) sanctions for “active support for the use of Russian armed forces in Ukraine”.
Also, it was discovered that the Visegrad rally was attended earlier by former Russian volunteers in BiH who are a link in the intricate network in which there are organizations like “Night Wolves” and Cossack associations in the Balkans.
Aleksandar Savic from the RS Veterans Organization said that some families of Russian volunteers come to Visegrad every year, but that there are no special announcements about their possible arrival.
In April 2021, on the occasion of the Day of Russian Volunteers, the Association of Women Victims of War submitted a report to the Prosecutor’s Office of BiH, which formed a case and handed it over to the acting prosecutor.
The report states that the event glorifies war crimes and deeply insults surviving victims, family members, exiles, and returnees.
The Russian volunteers fought under the command of the VRS, mostly in units of the Sarajevo-Romanian Corps. Former Minister of Labor and Veterans’ and Disability Protection of RS Dusko Milunovic said earlier that 700 Russian volunteers participated in the war in BiH from 1992 to 1995.
The Day of Russian Volunteers, which is included in the calendar of significant historical events of the RS, is celebrated on April 12th, the day when three Russian volunteers – Konstantin Bogoslovski, Vladimir Safonov, and Dmitrij Popov – died near Visegrad in 1993, Detektor reports.
E.Dz.
