Read on Twitter
An archive photo of the so-called White Wolves - a special task force of the Army of the Republika Srpska with the participation of Russians known in Moscow as "volunteers" - a role model for today's PMCs like Wagner. Bulgarians also fought as members of the White Wolves.
The so-called The 2nd detachment took a very active part in the peculiar peak of the "volunteer" activity 1992-1993. As we wrote in our book, the formation became known as the Royal Wolves because its members, veterans of Transnistria, are ideologically motivated RU monarchists.
This fact is interesting, as ideologically motivated "volunteers" and mercenaries with sympathy for conservative values and the far-right will be seen later in Wagner and its commander Dmitry Utkin as well as with the Rusich, led by the notorious neo-Nazis of St. Petersburg.
Russian authors who study Russia's "volunteer" presence in the Balkans in the 1990s are trying to downplay this ideological element but the recruitment is based on existing networks in Russia that share pro-monarchist views.
In 1992, 27-year-old Alexander Mukharev, nicknamed "Ace", became the commander of the "Wolves" and became one of the legends of the Russians fighters in 1990s, and his deputy became Igor Girkin, a veteran of the two Chechen wars and Transnistria, later known as Strelkov.
(Strelkov reached the post of Commander of the Armed Forces of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic and Commandant of Donetsk in 2014.)
After its disbandment in 1993, its members joined in 1994 the Republika Srpska Military Special Operations Unit, the White Wolves, led by the former deputy head of the Center for Public Safety in East Sarajevo, Srdjan Knezevic.
As we mention in our book on Russian PMCs, according to witnesses before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, Knezevic's White Wolves had volunteers from Russia and Bulgaria, and the Wolves and their commander were controlled by Ratko Mladic himself.
Russian fighters supported the activities of the s-called Avengers (Osvetnici), led by a war crimes convict Milan Lukić, according to testimonies from Visegrad ethnic cleansing survivors.
The Russian historians deny the detachments' involvement in crimes related to ethnic cleansing in Visegrad while the cleanings took place in the operative area of the Wolves, which, led by Mikhail Trofimov and Igor Strelkov, participated in some of the heaviest battles.
Igor Girkin himself probably also has BiH citizenship and received a military pension in the country before reappearing in the spotlight in the fighting in eastern Ukraine.
The Royal Wolves and its Bosnian experience is the main prototype of the future Russian combat units that will operate abroad on the principle of "quasi-volunteering".
After the Wolves, in the period 1993 to 1995, the coordination of the transfer of small groups or individual "volunteers" outside these formations continued.
In 1993, an additional combat unit was briefly formed in Zvornik, composed of Russian personnel recruited from Moscow and St. Petersburg, and transferred to Bosnia by flights from Sofia.
In the autumn of 1993, the Third Detachment was formed, led by the former midshipman of the Russian Marines and a veteran of Abkhazia, Alexander Shkrabov (Sasha Rus), and his group fought in the Dinarides, as well as at Olovo and Tarnovo.
In 1994 the main part of the fighters of the disbanded Royal Wolves moved from Sarajevo to Jahorina and until 1996 they will act as part of the strike group of the White Wolves.
In addition to these formations in the former Yugoslavia, a "Cossack" detachment was activated in 1993 via Alexander Zagrebov and Republika Srpska, and was stationed for the most part in Visegrad and to a lesser extent in the village of Skelani.
(why Russia decided to participate in the war in Bosnia, read the excellent book by @DimitarBechev - Rival Power: Russia's Influence in Southeast Europe https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0747RYBPS )
Cossacks fight near Visegrad and defend Skelani from attacks by the 28th Division of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina, based in Srebrenica under Naser Oric`s command.
In 2011, in memory of Russian "volunteers" and mercenaries killed in the Bosnian war and as evidence of their involvement in the conflict, Republika Srpska`s authorities erected a five-and-a-half-meter cross on a hill east of Visegrad.
All the information shared in this thread is told in detail in our book with @avramovok, Russian Invisible Armies, published this June in Sofia after 3 years of research on the Russian mercenaries. https://ciela.com/ruskite-nevidimi-armii.html
