A Serb died as a Wagner mercenary in Bahmut: Six months ago, Vucic claimed that there were no Serbs in Prigozhin’s mercenary group

Serbian volunteer Uros Prvulovic died in Bakhmut, Ukraine, as a mercenary of the Wagner group, Slobodna Dalmacija reported, noting that another Serb was killed whose name was not published on social networks – Rutube (a Russian video platform) or Telegram.

It is not known when exactly Prvulovic was killed, but the story became topical when Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder and owner of Wagner, withdrew to Belarus with his followers, and when some of his mercenaries signed contracts with the Russian defence ministry, which until recently was opposed by many in this group.

The condolences to the family were conveyed on his Telegram channel by Major DNR, Dejan Berić, a Serbian sniper, who did not even want to say Uros’s surname, but the fans of the serbian volunteers immediately understood who he was talking about.

“He died fighting for Artemovsk (as the Russians call Bakhmut) and his body was found ten days ago. We cannot announce where the funeral will take place, but I thought about going to this funeral, but unfortunately I cannot because of my commitments.

Uros was in prison for two months because he was on B.J.’s side who got him into trouble too.I and some of our volunteers got him out of prison and now we may regret it, because if he had been in prison, he would certainly not have died. But you can’t fight fate,” said Beric at the end of the twenty-minute video about the situation at the front.

It seems that U.P. is a native of Krusevac or its surroundings, as the comments below Beric’s video also included condolences from people in the area.

In 2014, at the very beginning of the aggression against Ukraine, U.P. came to Lugansk as a volunteer from Serbia and became a member of the Seventh Brigade. In the meantime, he married a Russian woman, Elena Bondarenko, with whom he has a child, but this marriage ended in divorce.

“He left a child, and he should not have gone to war in the first place. His uncle lives in Moscow, he was able to avoid this war, in which he re-enlisted from the beginning of the ‘special military operation’. He left the army for a while after being wounded and imprisoned, but after the start of the ‘special military action’ he joined Wagner. “Uros took part in the battles of Debalytseve, Svetlodarsk, the villages of Lugansk, Severodonetsk, Lisichansk, Popasna, as well as on the front at Bakhmut,” comment insiders.

He has also been a frequent guest of pro-Russian and Serbian journalists, recently giving an interview with Miodrag Zarkovic, which was deleted from YouTube and cannot be found on russian platforms.

U.P. once scared the public in 2018 by saying that Ukraine would use the fact that the World Cup is in Russia to attack Russia, which turned out to be just his wrong assumptions.

Supporters of the war in Ukraine celebrate his image and his work, although we have also seen on some portals the cries of his wife in 2018, who said that her husband had been arrested by the authorities in Lugansk on 24 November 2018 and that she had not known where he was for months.

She speculated that he ended up in prison because he knew about the illegal actions of some people, but apparently it was about the dispute of Serb volunteers in Ukraine.

It is this time spent in prison that Berić talks about in his video, and he regrets that his former opponent, Uros, has been released from prison at all.

Serbian volunteers in Ukraine, istraga.ba wrote on 12 March this year, judging by the video, are being trained by Oleg Blokhin, who has been posing as a war reporter and fighter for years.

This Russian citizen fought for years in Syria on the side of Bashar al-Assad’s forces. He has posted photos from Aleppo on social media.

Western journalists have labelled him a member of Wagner’s unit, but he has only claimed to be a “war reporter”.

However, russian media published articles describing Blohin as having trained “hunters”.

According to russian media reports, Oleg Blokhin was also arrested in Syria last year for allegedly criticising the military capabilities of russian officer Alexander Chaika.

But Blokhin was released last October, and the credit for the release of this “reporter and fighter” goes to Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the Wagner unit, whose members fought in Syria.

“Russian businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin announced the return of captured military commissar Oleg Blokhin from Syria and said that the famous phrase “Russians do not abandon their own” once again proves its relevance”, was published on 2 October last year.

The President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic, it will be recalled, denied at the beginning of the year the allegations that the russian military unit Wagner was present in Serbia.

On 16 January, on the Serbian television channel Happy, he stated that ‘Serbia has a good law, which he initiated a few years ago, prohibiting Serbian citizens from participating in foreign battlefields’.

Let’s note that on 14 January, a mural in honour of the notorious russian unit Wagner appeared in Belgrade, created by far-right members of the informal organisation “Narodna patrola”, who shared the post on their Telegram channel. The mural was painted over a day later.

Vucic was soon denied by the foreign and, above all, russian media. Indeed, on the first day of March, the Brussels portal Politico wrote, quoting the Serbian President and russian portals, that Serbs recruited into the Wagner paramilitary group, which is taking part in hostilities in Ukraine, would be arrested on their return to their homeland.

Vucic, the russian portal lenta.ru reported, also objected to the fact that Wagner was in fact recruiting in a pro-Russian state.

“I don’t need Wagner’s support, I don’t need to be applauded or criticised,” Vucic said.

This, they recall, is not the first time that a serbian president has been criticised for information about Wagner’s recruitment of Serbs.

At the same time, Yevgeni Prigozhin, founder and head of PMC Wagner, reportedly said that there were no serbian citizens in PMC and that they had “been absent for a long time”.

The President of Serbia, topwar.ru wrote, did not ignore the participation of “Serbian volunteers in hostilities against the armed forces of Ukraine and, in fact, the entire collective West, on the side of Russia”.

According to this portal, Vucic said that he was concerned about the participation of serbian citizens in the armed conflicts in Ukraine. It is also reported that the Serbian President added that he was “outraged by the fact that Serbs are being recruited into Wagner’s PMC”.

“As soon as citizens participating in the war in Ukraine return home, they will be arrested. I do not need Wagner’s support, nor do I need to be applauded or criticised,” topwar.ru writes, quoting Vucic’s promise.

Vucic’s statement regarding the recruitment of Serbs into the Wagner paramilitary group and their fighting in Ukraine on Russia’s side was also reported by russia’s Gazeta newspaper at the time.

“Serbs recruited to fight in Ukraine will be arrested when they return to Serbia and are within reach of our institutions. They are not recruited in this way in a friendly country”, Gazeta.ru reported Vucic as saying.

The russian portal also draws attention to Politico’s writing that “Russia is exerting hybrid pressure on the President of Serbia”.

They recall that recently “hundreds of Serbian nationalists and pro-Russian activists linked to Wagner gathered in Belgrade to demand an end to the process of normalisation of relations with Kosovo”. They shouted slogans such as “Kosovo is a betrayal of Russia!”. and threatened Vucic.

Prigozhin responded to Vucic on the second day of March, stating that “Vucic is raging for no reason”. There are no Serbs in Wagner”. This is what Prigozhin said in his Telegram channel, as reported by index.hr.

“The last person who fought in Wagner left the area two months ago. If any Serb claims that he fought in Wagner in 2023, he is lying. Do not believe him,” Prigozhin said on 2 March this year./The Geopost/