Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic Demanded Stop Recruiting Serbs into Wagner PMC

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has demanded that the recruitment of Serbian citizens into the Wagner PMC to participate in Russia's war with Ukraine be stopped. He said this in an interview with Serbian Happy Television, Reuters reports .

"Why are you, from Wagner, inviting someone from Serbia [to join the PMC], even though you know that this is against our rules?" Reuters quotes Vucic as saying.

In early December, the Wagner Center telegram channel reported the opening of a “Russian-Serbian cultural and information center for friendship and cooperation.” In early January, U.S. State Department adviser Derek Chollet told the AP that Washington was concerned about Wagner’s activities on Serbian territory. As an example of such activity, the agency cited recruitment ads for the PMC posted on the Balkan version of RT.

In mid-January, RIA Novosti reported that the first "volunteers" from Serbia had arrived in the annexed part of Ukraine's Zaporizhia Oblast. The country's Defense Minister Milos Vucevic warned that this could result in criminal liability. In turn, the creator of the Wagner PMC, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said that the PMC is not present in Serbia. "There are currently no Serbian citizens in the Wagner PMC and there haven't been any for a long time," he added.

• According to Reuters, Serbs fought in Ukraine on the side of pro-Russian forces in 2014 and 2015. The Ukrainian Embassy in Serbia estimated the number of such people at about 300 in 2019, the Serbian service of Radio Liberty writes .
• Serbian law prohibits citizens from participating in armed conflicts abroad. According to Radio Liberty's Serbian service, the country's courts have convicted more than 30 people who fought on Russia's side in Ukraine.