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The All-Russia People’s Front, ONF, a political organisation founded by Russian President Vladimir Putin, which has been under European Union sanctions since February 2023 for financing pro-Russian forces in eastern Ukraine, held a ceremony on Sunday alongside the Descendants of Republika Srpska Veterans at a cemetery in Visegrad where Russian volunteers killed while fighting for the Bosnian Serbs in the 1990s war are buried.
Five members of the ONF are also on the EU’s sanctions list.
Representatives of the ONF, led by Alexei Alekhin, visited Visegrad as part of a Russian project to transfer the ‘Fire of Memory’, an eternal flame that commemorates Russian soldiers killed from World War Two onwards, Municipality said. ‘Fire of Memory’ is sent from Moscow to 13 other countries.
According to Alekhin’s Telegram account, he leads the executive board of the ONF for the Nizhny Novgorod region and is involved in raising funds for soldiers on the frontlines in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas.
The Visegrad municipality’s website said Alekhin handed over the ‘Fire of Memory’ to the president of the Association of Veterans of Republika Srpska, Zoran Miljanovic, at the memorial to Russian volunteer fighters in Visegrad.
Miljanovic said that the Bosnian Serb war veterans felt honoured because they were “selected by the All-Russia People’s Front to be the guards of the eternal flame in Republika Srpska”.
“The eternal flame will probably be kept next to the memorial to Russian volunteers in Visegrad,” Miljanovic added.
Before the memorial service, Mladen Djurevic, the mayor of the Visegrad municipality, organised a reception at the municipality building for representatives of the Veterans’ Association and the All-Russia People’s Front.
Djurevic met Alekhin and said that they “paid respect to Russian volunteers, as well as to all the Serb soldiers who gave their lives for the freedom of the Serb people”.
Djurevic refused to comment about the event for BIRN, saying that any query should be sent to the municipality’s spokesperson.
The ONF is a political coalition headed by Putin’s party United Russia, with members also including several other parties in the Russian parliament and Russian non-governmental organisations.
The Official Journal of the European Union, the EU’s gazette of record, stated on February 25 this year that the ONF is a movement created in May 2011 as a coalition of socio-political organisations at the suggestion of then Prime Minister Putin, who continues to be ONF’s leader.
According to the EU gazette, the ONF aims to forge formal alliances between the United Russia party and various Russia non-governmental organisations.
Amid Russia’s war against Ukraine, the ONF has been organising a campaign called “All for Victory!”, collecting aid and financial donations to support the military units of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic.
Alekhin posted a photo on his Telegram channel showing him supporting the campaign.
The EU also believes that the ONF owns the rights to the trademark to the symbol ‘Z’, which is used to show support for the war against Ukraine and the Russian armed forces.
“Members of ONF have been responsible for organising several public meetings in support of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, at which the ‘Z’ symbol has been extensively used. ONF is therefore responsible for supporting and implementing actions and policies which undermine and threaten the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine,” the EU’s Official Journal said.
Other ONF figures under EU sanctions include the vice-presidents of its main office, Alexey Komissarov, Leonid Roshal and Elena Shmeleva, executive board director Mikhail Kuznetsov, his deputy Sergei Gorbunov, as well as Julia Belekhova, member of its Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights, who is also a member of the council’s working group for what it calls the “special military operation” in Ukraine, using Putin’s phrase for the war.
According to the Visegrad municipality’s website, ONF representative Alekhin, who leads the organisation in Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine’s Donbas region, said that the ‘Fire of Memory’ was a flame taken from the constantly-lit fire next to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Moscow and then transferred to other parts of the Russian Federation and other countries.
Zoran Miljanovic, the president of the Association of Veterans of Republika Srpska, compared the ONF with associations of Yugoslav Partisan veterans who fought fascism during World War Two.
“As for their participation in conflicts between Russia and Ukraine, I don’t know about that. You should know that each medal has two sides. I would like to convey that we have had enough of war and I want the conflict to end as soon as possible. We will also gladly receive some of the Ukrainian organisations that express the wish to mark the Day of Victory over Fascism,” Miljanovic told BIRN.
The municipality said that Miljanovic described the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Moscow as one of the most respected places in Russia.
“We are honoured to bring a part of the eternal flame to Visegrad in Republika Srpska. That part of the eternal flame symbolises the union of the Serbian and Russian people, the union of our memory,” the municipality’s website quoted Alekhin as saying.
The website also stated that the ONF led by Putin was implementing the ‘Fire of Memory’ project as a patriotic operation to coincide with the marking of May 9, Victory Day, “the purpose of which is to transfer part of the eternal flame, as one of the key symbols of memory of the heroes who were killed”.
Dusko Vukotic, a member of the Association of Republika Srpska Veterans who is also the organisation’s ex-president, said that Bosnia and Herzegovina is not a member of the European Union and that there are no obstacles in domestic legislation to cooperating with non-governmental organisations such as the ONF.
Vukotic said he hopes that the victory over fascism in World War Two will be more widely commemorated.
“As for the EU sanctions against the ONF, I will not comment on that, but I should say that many NATO members, together with Russian organisations, are holding joint events to mark the fight against fascism across the globe,” he told BIRN.
“We will always gladly respond to such events. We are glad that such a non-governmental organisation has recognised us as people who cherish the fight against fascism,” he added.
Bojan Savic, president of the Descendants of Veterans of Republika Srpska, told BIRN that he did not attend the event in Visegrad, adding that he did not know how the collaboration with the ONF had been arranged.
For several years, there have been gatherings in Visegrad of pro-Russian organisations and former volunteers who fought on the side of the Bosnian Serb Army during the 1990s Bosnian war.
BIRN has found that these gatherings have previously been attended by members of the Union of Volunteers of Donbas who are involved in the war in Ukraine.
However, since the start of the Russian invasion, they have not attended any events in Visegrad.
