War criminal Novak Stjepanović, who was sentenced to 13 years in prison in Serbia for crimes against civilians in Bratunac, never reported to serve his sentence. Instead, he spent months on the battlefield in Ukraine, where he joined Russian forces and openly posted photos from the “Armed Forces of Russia” on social media.
“God’s destiny has determined that he will fight for justice all his life.” These are the words that a convicted war criminal in Bosnia and Herzegovina wrote on his Facebook profile.
The text is accompanied by a photo of him holding a rifle, standing in a forest with a helmet on his head, dressed in a military uniform with the inscription “Armed Forces of Russia.”
This is one of ten posts he shared on the popular social network between the beginning of April and the end of May 2025, in which he described his experiences in Ukraine, where he joined Russian forces in their invasion of the country.
However, he was sentenced in Serbia to 13 years in prison for war crimes against civilians in the Bratunac area. As stated in the judgment, as a member of the Army of Republika Srpska, specifically the Bratunac Light Infantry Brigade, he participated in the capture of 14 Bosniak civilians, eight of whom died. The judgment also states that he raped a Bosniak woman in a house in Bratunac.
A lie detector test showed that Novak Stjepanović had avoided serving his prison sentence in Serbia and joined the Russian army.
Fighting on foreign battlefields, including in Bosnia and Herzegovina, is punishable in Serbia by prison sentences ranging from several months to several years.
A month after Stjepanović posted his last photo from the battlefield in Ukraine, on June 13, 2025, the Belgrade Court of Appeals handed down a final verdict for war crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina, sentencing him to 13 years in prison.
The verdict describes how, on May 20, 1992, in the village of Borkovac, Stjepanović beat and kicked captured civilians, took their money and valuables, and then took a group of civilians to a nearby stream, where they were killed. It also describes in detail the sexual violence Stjepanović committed against a 19-year-old woman who was captured with her family in the “Sase” zinc and lead mine.
“Unknown soldiers of Serbian nationality took her, her sister, and another girl from the mine premises to an unknown house in Bratunac, where the next day or the day after, they took her to another house in Bratunac, where Novak Stjepanović raped her in a room on the upper floor,” the judgment reads.
Prior to the confirmation by the appeals court, the High Court in Belgrade issued a guilty verdict against Stjepanović on December 24, 2024. The Humanitarian Law Center in Belgrade, which monitored the proceedings in this case, confirmed to Detektor that Stjepanović attended the sentencing in December.
The Belgrade High Court confirmed to Detektor in a written response that Stjepanović had not begun serving the prison sentence confirmed in June. They added that he had not been banned from leaving Serbia.
The same information was also confirmed by the Directorate for the Enforcement of Criminal Sanctions of the Serbian Ministry of Justice.
Edina Karić from Bosnia and Herzegovina, who witnessed the rape for which Stjepanović was convicted, says she is disappointed with the justice system, in which those convicted of war crimes do not serve their sentences.
“I can’t say that I trust them any more,” Karić added.
She identified Stjepanović in photographs from the time when he was still in Serbia and from the period when he was reporting from the battlefield in Ukraine, which Detektor found during its investigation.
Stjepanović’s photographs from the trial are not publicly available, and the High Court in Belgrade did not provide Detektor with photographs from the trial.
In addition to Edina Karić, two independent sources close to the case identified Stjepanović for Detektor.
Although it is not possible to say with certainty when Stjepanović traveled to the battlefield in Ukraine, Detektor’s analysis of the photos from his profile showed that his first post from that country was dated April 8, 2025.
As can be seen, Stjepanović photographed himself in front of a statue of Vladimir Lenin, founder of the Soviet Union, near the Donbass Palace Hotel in Donetsk, in the occupied part of Ukraine.
“Protect Donetsk like Srebrenica”
Stjepanović’s friends expressed their support for him in the comments below this photo, with one of them writing: “Krke, protect Donetsk like you protected Srebrenica.”
It was under this alias that Stjepanović was identified in the indictment confirmed by the court of Bosnia and Herzegovina in November 2009, after a two-year arrest warrant had been issued for him. This indictment charged him with the capture, abuse, and murder of civilians in Bratunac.
After the indictment was filed, Stjepanović was not available to the judicial authorities of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and nine years later, a new indictment was confirmed against him for sexual violence. The indictment was served on him through international legal assistance in Ljubovija, Serbia, where he was residing at the time. In the meantime, the indictments were combined into one and the case was transferred to the judicial authorities of Serbia, with Stjepanović’s trial beginning at the end of January 2021 at the High Court in Belgrade.
In a written response to Detektor, the court in Bosnia and Herzegovina explained that it had been informed of the outcome of the trial and had received the judgments from Belgrade, which it had served on the injured parties.
“The court has not been informed of any further developments in the above-mentioned case,” the written response stated.
The same response came from the BiH Prosecutor’s Office, which confirmed to Detektor that a third case had been opened against Stjepanović in 2024, relating to the murder of six civilians in the Bratunac area. This case was also referred to the Serbian judicial authorities, but according to reports, it was returned on the grounds that certain documentation was missing.
The BiH Prosecutor’s Office confirmed to Detektor that in mid-October 2025, they resubmitted the case to the Serbian judiciary, noting that the documentation they claim is missing is already on the list of cases they sent earlier.
Goran Petronijević, one of Stjepanović’s defense attorneys in this case, did not respond to Detektor’s numerous questions and calls about his client’s current location, his health condition, and the fact that he is not serving his prison sentence.
An anonymous source who spent some time with Stjepanović in Russia confirmed to Detektor that he arrived in Khanty-Mansiysk in Western Siberia in April.
Detektor confirmed this information with a photo posted on Facebook in June 2025 by Četnik dobrovoljac, a profile behind which Željko Tomić hides.
In a previous investigation, Detektor revealed Tomić as one of the recruiters of citizens from the Western Balkans to go to the battlefield in Ukraine.
On June 9, he posted a video in which he says goodbye to Aleksandar Kandić, nicknamed “Ural,” who, according to reports from Telegram groups and media in Serbia, was killed on the battlefield in Ukraine in June. Detektor was unable to independently confirm this information.
In addition to numerous photos of Kandić, the video also contains one in which he is in a church with four other men. One of them is Novak Stjepanović, standing to the right of Kandić.
Detektor found that the photo from the church was first published in April 2025 on the Telegram channel “Serbian Knights,” which reports on the activities of Serbian volunteers from the battlefield in Ukraine. Unlike the photo posted by Tomić on his social media accounts in June, all faces in the photo published at that time are blurred.
Detector determined that the church is the Church of the Icon of the Mother of God “Unexpected Joy,” located in western Siberia, in the city of Pyt-Yakh in the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug.
According to the source, Stjepanović signed a contract with the Russian Ministry of Defense there in mid-April, which Detektor was unable to independently confirm.
“He was there at the camp, waiting for the contract to be signed and the documents to be handed over. So we were there for a few days, and then in mid-April they signed the contract. And then they went to the training ground,” the source added to Detektor.
When Detektor inquired about the contract, it was told that it had been signed for one year, which Detektor was also unable to independently confirm.
On April 18, Stjepanović posted a photo of himself in military uniform, in a building resembling a military bunker, surrounded by other soldiers.
One of the photos from May also shows his military ID tag, which bears a number and the words “ВС Россия,” which translates to “Russian Armed Forces.”
That month, Stjepanović told his Facebook friends that he had been wounded in his right arm, but that “everything was fine.” In one of the comments to curious questions, he replied: “I’m playing a little war in Russia.”
Is he fighting near Pokrovsk?
The detector also found information on the Facebook profile of the veteran association “Garda Panthers” from Bijeljina that Stjepanović is on the front line. The post from May 10 contained a photo that they say is from the fighting around Pokrovsk, a town in Donetsk.
As you can see, it shows Stjepanović in uniform, with the emblem of the Russian armed forces, surrounded by other soldiers.
The “Garda Panthers” association told Detektor that they found the photo on another Facebook page, without specifying which one.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video address on May 21 that the situation is most difficult in Pokrovsk.
A Reuters report states that elderly and sick residents were evacuated from the town, which once had a population of 60,000 but had shrunk to 1,915 by the end of May.
In some of his posts, Stjepanović also revealed details from the front line where he was stationed, and on April 20, he posted a photo with the caption “Easter dinner,” showing two unknown persons in uniform.
Detektor was unable to independently confirm which unit Stjepanović joined upon his arrival at the battlefield.
Stjepanović and Željko Tomić are just some of the people from the Western Balkans who have voluntarily joined military or paramilitary units in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
These individuals, whose exact number is unknown, mostly come from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia, even though fighting on foreign battlefields is a criminal offense in those countries. In a recent investigation, Detektor discovered how the recruitment of volunteers via social networks works and who the people are who organize these activities in Russia and Ukraine.
Some volunteers are also suspected of war crimes in Ukraine. As confirmed to Detektor by the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office, in 2024 this institution requested information from Bosnia and Herzegovina about 12 unnamed citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina suspected of war crimes in that country. They stated that they had not received any information about their status.
A photo of Stjepanović showing his wound, with a message that his recovery is proceeding according to “God’s will and plan,” posted on May 24, was his last post from the battlefield.
Detektor was unable to confirm Stjepanović’s current whereabouts. No one responded to calls and messages to the phone number that Detektor found and uses Stjepanović’s photos in communication apps. Instead, the Detektor journalist was blocked on messaging services. His family members also did not respond to Detektor’s questions.
Edina Karić, who was one of the witnesses in the case against Stjepanović, told Detektor that she did not even know that he had been convicted or that he was not in prison.
“I gave my statement and testified against him via video link from Tuzla. So, I have lost all hope, this is a disaster, I don’t believe in the justice system at all,” Karić added in a telephone conversation.
She was in a group of three women who were taken by Stjepanović and other soldiers to one of the houses in Bratunac, where some of them were raped.
“He didn’t rape me, but he raped the girl who was with me, and I know that because I saw it,” said Karić.
She also recalled that after that, during the war, she saw Stjepanović again in Bratunac, in the premises where the military police had taken them, and how he said at the time that “he was tired of killing and would like to go to some island to rest.”
“It’s in my head, if not ten times a day, then several times, it comes to mind when you’re working or when you hear something. And I can’t forget that. But the state institutions, the court, the prosecution, everyone in Bosnia and Herzegovina, they have forgotten us,” Karić added.
“I still think he has some protection in Serbia and that he has had it all along. That’s why he left so easily, as if he were a hero, not a war criminal,” Karić concluded.
Novak Stjepanović has also posted photos from his personal archive on his Facebook profile several times. In one of them, he stands in the middle of a unit of dozens of soldiers wearing red berets. The photo is accompanied by Stjepanović’s message: “The guys I commanded. All heroes.”
Stjepanović also posted several photos from meetings of the extreme Serbian Radical Party, which were also attended by war criminal Vojislav Šešelj.
In one of the photos from his personal archive, Stjepanović is seen with another soldier in a vehicle with license plates from the Republic of Serbian Krajina, a parastatal entity of the Serbian people in the territory of the Republic of Croatia. The detector identified him as Milenko Prodanović, known as Mungos, who was accused by victims of crimes in Bratunac of various crimes against the civilian population. At the trial of Naser Orić, former commander of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina, who was acquitted of charges of crimes in the Srebrenica area, witness Suad Smajlović recognized Prodanović as a pre-war guide in the local company “Vihor,” who left for Croatia as a volunteer in mid-1990 along with several other townspeople.
The witness said that Prodanović was the leader of the special unit “Mungos.” In various media reports, in which victims also testified, he was identified as the perpetrator of war crimes in the Bratunac area, although he was never prosecuted for them.
After the war, Prodanović served one term as a councilor in the Bratunac municipal assembly, after which, according to court reports, he left for Russia.
Jovana Kolarić, a researcher at the Center for Humanitarian Law who followed Stjepanović’s trial at the High Court in Belgrade, explained that convicts in Serbia do not usually begin serving their sentences immediately after the verdict is handed down.
“The problem is that everyone defends themselves from freedom, and detention measures are very rarely ordered. They are mainly reserved for people who are not citizens of Serbia,” Kolarić warned, assessing Stjepanović’s case as problematic.
Kolarić added that there has been only one case in Serbia so far where a person convicted of war crimes did not show up to serve their prison sentence, and that the person’s whereabouts have not yet been discovered.
After learning about Stjepanović’s activities from Detektor, Kolarić stated that the judiciary in Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina does not adequately address cases such as this one, where, in addition to a final judgment, there was also an element of departure to a foreign battlefield, which is a criminal offense under the law.
“The only thing available is to issue an arrest warrant, but I doubt that will happen before your text appears in public,” Kolarić added./Klix.ba/
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