Despite the fact that the commemoration of the Day of Russian Volunteers in Visegrad has for years provoked harsh criticism and condemnation from the public because of their participation in the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the crimes they committed, a gathering was still held in Visegrad on Wednesday, where some 3,000 Bosniaks were killed, including 600 women and over a hundred children.

For the representatives of the victims’ association, the commemoration is a provocation of the returnees.

A mother of one of the 37 Russians who lost their lives fighting on the side of the then Republika Srpska Army came to commemorate the Day of Russian Volunteers. According to the war documentation, the Russians were paid for their engagement with “war booty”.

Russian volunteers and mercenaries started coming to Visegrad in an organized manner at the end of October and beginning of November 1992, and the key person for planning the arrival was the Cossack captain Aleksandar Kravchenko.

Ljudmila Bogos came to the grave of her son, a Russian mercenary who lost his life fighting in a foreign country.

“This is my country, my Konstantin is here. He said, mum, I'm going to build bridges, he didn't say he was going to war. She added that Konstantin is now in space, he died on the same day Yuri Gagarin went into space,” Ludmila said.

Konstantin, a Russian volunteer whose coat of arms is now in Visegrad, was born in Tajikistan, his mother said.

“We will pray for the dead and remember the Russian volunteers who have been helping the Serbs for 200 years. Let us not be a generation whose link in that friendship between Serbs and Russians will be broken,” said Savo Cvjetinovic, the head of the Zavet Serbian-Russian Friendship Association. Zavet is an organization that is also associated with the departure of volunteers from Bosnia and Herzegovina to take part in the Ukraine war.

The Association of Women Victims of War has been trying for years to ban this gathering, but so far there has been no reaction from the Prosecutor's Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

During the war in BiH, some of the most monstrous crimes ever committed in this area took place in Visegrad. The live pyre in Bikavac, one of the most brutal ways of killing civilians, horrified the world public. The crime was committed in the locality of Bikavac, on June 27, 1992, when members of the Serb military formation “Avengers” imprisoned around 70 Bosniak civilians in the family house of Meho Aljic and burned them alive. Among the people who were burned alive were mostly women, children and the elderly, and the youngest person was a two-day-old child.