The identity of Serbian mercenaries ‘Dunubi’ and ‘Sava’ participating in the Russian paramilitary group ‘Sudoplatov’ is revealed

“This is the second round. Forty-two of our fighters from the former Yugoslavia and Europe. It’s been three months since they’ve been here. The documents have been handed over to Vladimir Putin for signature. Before that, the documents go through the designated services. All foreigners who receive passports to participate in the Russian armed forces go through us. I collect all the documents, take them to the relevant service, they are examined and taken to the President (Putin) for signature,” Dejan Beric said in a video message published on 28 February this year.

Beric is a citizen of Serbia who has lived in Russia for years. He has been fighting in Ukraine on the side of Russian separatists since 2014. He now presents himself as a coordinator for volunteers coming from the former Yugoslavia. In mid-December, he published images of several Serbian citizens undergoing military training in Russian camps.

“The time for training is over. It’s time to prove yourself in the fight. We wish them a successful hunt,” the “Sudoplatov Battalion” Telegram channel posted on Sunday morning.

The posts were accompanied by photographs from a military vehicle showing five people. At least two of them are of Serbian nationality, while several people commented on the photos that a Macedonian is also present.

Some time later, a video was also published showing the same soldiers in another military vehicle. The speaker in the video is Andrey Rodionov, a Russian citizen known as Viking. Viking leads a movement of Russian-Slavic unification and revival which, according to its website, opposes “Western globalism, materialism and multiculturalism”. Among his declared goals are the unification and revival of the indigenous state-forming Russian people, the revival of historic Greater Russia and the creation of a Union of Slavic states headed by Greater Russia. One of the profile photos on his private Telegram channel is one taken in Kosovo. Radionov, much younger than in the current photos, poses in front of a signboard in Mitrovica.

“There are our Serbian brothers,” Radionov says in a video he posted on Sunday morning.

In the description of the video, Radionov states that the video was made on 1 March and features “Sava” and “Dunav”. They are two people who have been presented by Russian television and media as volunteers from Serbia since December last year. However, there are media in Russia who suspect that different people are being presented as the same. The Russian portal theins.ru writes that “Sava” and “Dunav” sound different in two different stories.

“Tu su naša braća Srbi”, govori Andrej Radionov, jedan od pripadnika ruskih oružanih snaga iz odjeljenja “Rusov” koje je sastavni dio bataljona “Sudoplatov”. Snimak je nastao 1. marta ove godine na ukrajinskom ratištu. Na snimku se vide osobe koje podižu tri prsta pic.twitter.com/kPq0JnGvEF

— Istraga.ba (@IstragaB) March 5, 2023

Sava and Dunav repeat banal clichés such as “NATO is fighting for Ukraine”, that “all the problems were created by the West and its political establishment in Kiev”. Their thoughts are again largely narrated by Viking. According to him, several hundred foreigners can take part in the SVO, and “about 15 Serbs, five-six Macedonians and a few people from other Slavic countries” want to join their battalion, theis.ru reports.

But if you look at several videos, it is clear that behind the Dunav and Sava nicknames, there are people from the former Yugoslavia. But it is impossible to confirm their identity. Nevertheless, the fairly reliable Ukrainian portal Obozrevatel.com writes that the people behind the nicknames “Dunav” and “Sava” are Serbs Milan Lučić and Jovan Bjelotomić. The text also states that Lučić and Bjelotomić are wanted by Interpol in the Czech Republic and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

According to the Interpol database, Jovan Bjelotomić was born in 1996 in Bijeljina and holds citizenship of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia. According to the website of the Federal Police Administration, the Livno County Court has issued an arrest warrant for Bjelotomić for the crime of robbery. According to these documents, Bjelotomić was reported in Drvar when he, together with his brother Kosta and Nikola Grujić, robbed the branch of the “Intesa Sanpaolo Bank” in Drvar.

Milan Lučić, the media in Serbia reported two years ago, is wanted by the Czech Republic on suspicion of being a member of an organised crime group linked to drugs or violence.

In 2017, he was among 16 people arrested in the Czech Republic on suspicion of cultivating marijuana worth almost two million euros in 11 superlabs. Among them was Milan Lučić, who arrived in Prague that year as a seasonal worker for a fictitious company.

After he was released from custody, Lucic fled and an Interpol warrant was issued for him.

Since 2021, all trace of Lučić has been lost. The Ukrainian media, on the other hand, claim that he is the one hiding under the mask of the “Serbian warrior Dunav”. However, it is impossible to confirm this information at the moment, especially since the Sava and Dunav are masked in all of Andrei Radionov Viking footage.

Istraga.ba tried to contact Andrei Radionov, but he did not respond to our calls. Shortly after our call, he posted a clip that was supposedly taken on 1 March in the Zaporizhzhia region of Ukraine./Istraga.ba/