Ukraine Rebels Appeal to Serbs to Donate

“So far we have raised around 800 euro, which will be given to wounded defenders of the Donbas region [of eastern Ukraine]. We will also buy uniforms and equipment for the Slavic-Serbian ‘Jovan Sevic’ unit,” Zeljko Djurovic, a representative of Kosovo Front in Serbia, told BIRN on Tuesday.

Djurovic said around ten people from Serbia and Bosnia, as well as Serbs from Canada, Australia and Switzerland had donated money in the last two weeks. People had also offered food and clothes for the pro-Russian activists in Ukraine.

“Some people even wanted me to help them get from Serbia to Ukraine because they want to help our forces, but we don’t do that,” he added.

Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency reported last week that some Serbian volunteers are joining pro-Russian separatists in their fight against government troops in eastern Ukraine.

The agency reported that Igor Strelkov, who leads the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic defence forces, as saying that he knew some of the Serbian fighters from back when they all fought in the 1992-5 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Reacting to the report, Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic commented: “Any involvement of Serbian citizens in the Ukrainian crisis is detrimental to Serbia.” 

A leader of Kosovo Front in Moscow, Aleksandar Kravchenko, has since denied that the Serbs are fighting in eastern Ukraine for cash.

“It is a lie. They are all volunteers who love Russian people,” he said.

“I met them in Donetsk and no one came for money but to help the Russians who are being killed by the Ukrainian fascists,” Kravchenko told a Serbian website on Monday.

“The Kosovo Front is a humanitarian organization and we don’t recruit people...