Satirical meme about PMC Wagner Group logo/arm patch, with text in Russian reading “Nothing personal, it's just business. Wagner Group.” Author anonymous. This article was originally published by Truthmeter.mk. An edited version is republished here under a content-sharing agreement between Global Voices and Metamorphosis Foundation. The Russian paramilitary organization Wagner Group released a Serbian-language advertisement on January 5 on the news site Russia Today Balkan (RT Balkan), calling for all potential volunteers from Serbia to join the war against Ukraine. The ad drew criticism from Serbian officials and citizens and caused speculation about the Wagner Group's involvement in Serbia. Screenshot of the web advertisement about the Wagner Group call for volunteers on RT. On Jan 5, RT Balkan also published an article about the ad, titled “Wagner publishes a call for volunteers; conditions are more than appealing,” clarifying the conditions for participating in the war, the earnings, and the training available. The text about the ad disappeared from the website of RT Balkan soon after it was shared. Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić fiercely condemned the call in an interview for the National Television Happy TV. “Why do you from Wagner address people from Serbia when you know that that is against our rules?” asked Vučić, stressing the 2015 amendments to the Criminal Code that deem as criminal acts in Serbia both participation in a foreign conflict (Article 386a), as well as recruitment (Article 386b). The call prompted questions of whether the Wagner Group was active in Serbia and the Balkans region, given their confirmed presence in Ukraine, Syria, and in other countries. Wagner Group is a private military company owned by oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, providing mercenary services for the Russian Government in battlefields abroad, most notably in Syria and Ukraine. Their notoriety increased lately for recruiting convicts from Russian prisons to fight in Ukraine to supplement the high death rate of Russian regular army, as government mobilization initiatives fail to solve the attrition problem. Wagner's support to Russian military not openly recognize the Russian Government as mercenary forces are illegal in Russia. Wagner has declared that it was established for the purpose of “defending Russian interests.” In some African countries, they have unsuccessfully attempted to organize political campaigns and advocacy initiatives. Discussion of the Wagner Group's presence in Serbia intensified in November 2022 once the leader of the Serbian ultra-right organization People’s Patrol, Damjan Knežević, returned from a visit to the headquarters of the Wagner Group in Saint Petersburg, accompanied by Russian propagandist Aleksandar Lisov, presented as “head of Russian-Serbian Center “Eagles.” They were featured in a video, where Knežević said: We must express our support for Russia because that is largely expressing our support for Serbia. We must secure the biggest possible cooperation and aid from the Russian Federation. That is also aid from the Russian Army in case of conflict on Kosovo. Screenshot of the Orly (Eagles) Telegram group. On December 7, Serbian newspaper Danas quoted an announcement on a Wagner Telegram channel about opening of a Wagner Group Cultural Centre “Orly” (Eagles). It stated that its purpose is conducting of “soft diplomacy” with its member conducting “information showdown with Russian liberals who went to Serbia and there attempt to engage in anti-Russian activities in order to discredit Russia and worsen the relations between Russian and Serbian peoples.” The claim about the opening of the Wagner Centre in Serbia was denied by both Knežević and Lisov, who told BBC in Serbian that in fact Wagner allowed the “Eagles” to use their premises in Sankt Petersburg. On January 14, a mural celebrating Wagner was unveiled in the center of Serbia's capital Belgrade, signed by People's Patrol. Three days later, Russian state-owned domestic news agency RIA Novosti published news about several Serbian volunteers being trained for combat in Ukraine. Meanwhile, tensions increased in Kosovo after December 10, when local ethnic Serbs erected roadblocks and exchanged fire with police after the arrest of a suspected attacker on Kosovo police officers. During December, Knežević organized three protests in support of these Kosovo Serbs, aiming to disrupt the ongoing dialogue for normalization of relations between Serbia and Kosovo, facilitated by the European Union. Two gatherings took place in Belgrade and one at Kosovo border crossing Jarinje on December 18.