The Russian ultranationalist organization Rusov, whose members have been involved in Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, has been promoted by a councilor from the ruling party in Višegrad, eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Radio Free Europe (RFE) previously reported that the International Russian-Slavic Union and Revival Movement, known as Rusov, maintains ties with several far-right organizations in Serbia. Its leader, Andrei Rodionov, has traveled several times to countries in the region.

In April, Rusov’s Telegram channel published a photograph of Velibor Zeković, a councilor from the Socialist Party of Republika Srpska in the Višegrad Municipal Assembly. He is shown holding the movement’s flag on Zaglavak Hill, near Višegrad.

Željko Đurović is pictured alongside Zeković. Around ten years ago, he was introduced as the head of the Serbian branch of the All-Russian Kosovo Front Movement, which Ukrainian authorities consider an entity involved in organizing the deployment of people from the Balkans to the Ukrainian front. An emblem bearing Rusov’s symbol can also be seen on the sleeve of Đurović’s jacket.

The caption accompanying the photograph describes Zeković and Đurović as “Serbian allies of the Rusov movement.” It also says they are “at the place where, in 1993, Russian volunteers fought and shed blood side by side with the Serbs for Serbian Bosnia.”

Zeković did not respond to RFE’s phone calls and messages seeking clarification about his ties to the Rusov movement. The Socialist Party of Republika Srpska, to which he belongs, also did not comment on the photograph.

RFE also contacted Željko Đurović through the Russian social network VKontakte and by email but received no response. A request sent to the Rusov movement also went unanswered.

Links between Bosnian politics and the Russian right

Banja Luka-based journalist Đorđe Vujatović, who covers foreign influence in Bosnia and Herzegovina, describes the growing closeness between parties that call themselves socialist and right-wing organizations as paradoxical.

“It is paradoxical that parties nominally called socialist flirt with right-wing organizations and have no connection whatsoever to left-wing ideology,” he told RFE.

According to Vujatović, ties between political actors in Republika Srpska, an entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Russian right-wing groups are not isolated cases but have become the norm.

He recalled that a number of senior officials and officeholders had previously taken part in events also attended by Aleksandar Zaldostanov. Known by the nickname “The Surgeon,” Zaldostanov leads the Russian Night Wolves motorcycle group and is on the United States blacklist.

“The entire political mainstream is connected to the Russian Federation,” Vujatović concluded.

He attributes the main parties in Republika Srpska drawing closer to Moscow primarily to political opportunism. According to him, a large part of public opinion in the entity is aligned with the Russian narrative and the policies of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“Political actors have realized that this is advantageous for coming to power, and they are all riding this wave of populism and playing the card of historical ties with Russia, Pan-Slavism and Orthodoxy as unifying factors,” Vujatović said.

On the other hand, he believes the main objective of Russian organizations is to spread their ideas beyond the borders of the Russian Federation.

“Because of its historical ties, the Balkans are the most suitable area for this activity through proxies and for displaying allegiance to the multipolar world, as they call it,” he said.

Traces of wartime Russian-Serbian ties

Zeković and Đurović unfurled the Russian organization’s flag behind an improvised cross built from empty rocket-launcher containers. During the 1990s war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, members of the Army of Republika Srpska and volunteers who had arrived from Russia operated in that area.

War veterans’ associations in Republika Srpska have commemorated “Russian Volunteers’ Day” for years. Unlike on previous occasions, this year the authorities of Bosnia and Herzegovina barred Russian volunteers from entering the country. As a result, the commemoration was attended by representatives of veterans’ associations from Bosnia’s smaller entity, as well as relatives of volunteers from the Russian Federation.

Among those denied entry to Bosnia was Aleksandar Kravchenko, a former Russian volunteer in the Bosnian war and founder of the Kosovo Front organization, with which Željko Đurović is also associated. Kravchenko’s organization was active before the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, during the conflict in Donbas in the country’s east.

Ukrainian authorities describe the Kosovo Front as an organization that plays a role in recruiting Balkan volunteers. Kravchenko rejected this claim in a previous interview with RFE.

Speaking about citizens who voluntarily go to the Ukrainian front, Vujatović said contacts between Serbian and Russian actors do not represent a major concern for Bosnia and Herzegovina’s internal security. According to him, the problem is that the state rarely punishes citizens who take part in wars abroad.

“Going to foreign fronts is punishable, but the state does not respond, partly because some of these people have obtained Russian citizenship,” Vujatović said.

Rodionov has appeared alongside the Serbian volunteers “Danube” and “Sava.”

Russian-Serbian ties continued after February 2022, when the Kremlin launched its military invasion of neighboring Ukraine. There is no precise figure for the number of Bosnian citizens who have traveled as mercenaries to the Ukrainian front. However, Europol announced in 2025 that citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina were among hundreds of identified members of the Russian mercenary groups Wagner and Redut, without publishing further details.

Among the best-known figures is Davor Savičić, a Bosnian Serb and colonel in the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, known as the GRU. Ukrainian authorities have opened criminal proceedings against him for war crimes.

In early 2023, a video circulated on Telegram showing two masked soldiers speaking Serbian. They said they had joined Russian forces in Ukraine, specifically the Sudoplatov Battalion.

Using the code names “Danube” and “Sava,” the two described themselves as “Serbian patriots and Russophiles” who had arrived to help their “Russian brothers.”

Their identities have not been officially confirmed. Media outlets in Bosnia and Herzegovina, however, reported that they were citizens of the country who were wanted by Interpol for criminal offenses.

In the video featuring “Danube” and “Sava,” both wore the emblem of the Rusov movement.

The same yellow falcon with a solar cross, a symbol widely used in the iconography of far-right groups, also appears on the flag that Velibor Zeković and Željko Đurović unfurled in April 2026.

The profile and activities of the Rusov movement

The symbol belongs to a Russian association whose official manifesto lists among its main objectives the restoration of “historical Greater Russia, the protector of the Slavs, the bastion of traditional values and the guarantor of building a socially just society.”

After fighting broke out in eastern Ukraine in 2014, Rusov positioned itself in support of pro-Russian separatists. According to Rodionov’s own statements, he created the Phoenix unit, which fought as part of the Prizrak Brigade. It also included several volunteers from Serbia, about whom RFE has previously reported.

In a photograph purportedly taken in 2015 in the territory of the self-proclaimed “Luhansk People’s Republic,” Rodionov is shown wearing a camouflage uniform. Together with another man, he is holding a red flag bearing a far-right symbol also known as the “Slavic swastika.”

After the invasion began, Rodionov published photographs on Telegram showing him armed and in uniform. He claimed that in 2023 he had joined the Russian Federation’s Volunteer Assault Corps.

Rusov’s presence in the Balkans

The movement was founded in 2012. Its founder, Andrej Rodionov, has visited the Balkans several times and documented these trips with photographs on his social media accounts.

During an interview with Radio Belgrade in 2020, he said that “not only other organizations and movements, but also parties” were joining his movement.

According to media reports in North Macedonia, Rodionov has visited the country several times since 2017. In 2018, he organized a camp near Skopje where martial arts and the “spiritual traditions of Ancient Russia” were taught.

In Serbia, Rodionov has ties to the People’s Patrol, an unregistered far-right group known for actions against migrants. In 2021, he and the group’s leader, Damjan Knežević, marked in Belgrade the 100th anniversary of the exodus of Russian monarchists from Russia following the October Revolution.

Also in 2021, shortly before this event, Knežević had traveled to Moscow, where Andrej Rodionov was among the people he met.

In one photograph, Andrej Rodionov is shown third from the left, alongside the symbols of the Serbian Falcon far-right group.

Rusov also established ties with Serbian Falcon, a lesser-known far-right organization. In July 2024, the group held a gathering in Novi Sad dedicated to the “liberation of Srebrenica.” The wording referred to the anniversary of the genocide committed in 1995, when the enclave was seized by Republika Srpska forces under the command of Ratko Mladić.

Mladić was sentenced to life imprisonment by the International Tribunal in The Hague for the genocide and other crimes committed in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In May 2025, Serbian Falcon’s Instagram account published a photograph of Andrej Rodionov with three masked people dressed in uniforms and carrying weapons. Rusov and Serbian Falcon flags can be seen unfurled in the image.

The photograph was accompanied by the caption: “Russian comrades-in-arms with the Serbian falcons on the front defending Orthodoxy.” Donetsk, in eastern Ukraine, was listed as the location.

Flags bearing Rusov’s symbols have also been seen at protests supporting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, organized on several occasions by far-right groups in Belgrade.

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