Serbian sniper Dejan Beric spoke about the abuse of mercenaries from Serbia in the Russian army

Serbian sniper Dejan Beric spoke about the abuse of Serbian volunteers in the 119th Parachute Regiment. He posted an 11-minute video on his VKontakte page.

“I expect that after this I will be imprisoned for discrediting the army,” says Beric, but at the same time asks Putin to look into what is happening. He recorded the video while wearing a T-shirt with the words “Team Putin” written on it. In December 2023, Beric became his confidant in the upcoming presidential elections.

According to Berich, the command of the 119th regiment did not provide the Serbian mercenaries with anything: neither food, nor shells, nor uniforms. Beric himself supplied all this to his compatriots with the help of the Popular Front, he says.

The sniper notes that the Serbian mercenaries were called “gypsies” and they were asked why they came to the front. “They are treated not as people who came to fight with their hearts, but as people who came to steal,” Berich notes.

According to him, before the New Year, the regiment's leadership sent soldiers to attack. “They were given some two, some three BC horns,” says the sniper. The fighters were also told that they could seize the rest of the weapons in battle. The volunteers refused to go on the assault in such conditions and demanded to be transferred to another regiment. After that, all their weapons were taken away from them and they were kicked out of their dugouts for several days.

“Then they were threatened with prison, execution, beatings. They tried to influence them so that they would still go for the assault,” Beric said.

On the morning of January 8, the military police came to the mercenaries. “They came in and shot in the air […] They literally beat the soldiers who were unarmed with rifle butts,” the sniper said. He added that he appealed to the military prosecutor’s office and the administration of Ramzan Kadyrov so that the Serbian mercenaries would be transferred to the Akhmat detachment. However, “the leadership of the 119th does not want this to end well,” Berich said.

He added that he decided to record this video because he fears for the lives of Serbian volunteers. “The command of the 119th regiment is an organized crime group [...] These people are working against the Russian army,” concluded Berich.

Last fall it became known that about a hundred Serbian mercenaries had signed contracts with the Russian Ministry of Defense. The BBC Russian Service wrote that the authorities planned to form them into a full-fledged brigade of up to a thousand people.

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