Serbian and pro-Ukrainian activists on Thursday filed criminal charges against the Russian paramilitary group Wagner and his supporters, accusing them of recruiting Serbs to fight on Russia’s side in Ukraine, writes Reuters.

Cedomir Stojkovic, a Belgrade-based lawyer who also heads the public group, said the defendants include Russia’s ambassador to Serbia, Oleksandr Botsan-Kharchenko, and Aleksandar Vulin, head of Serbia’s Intelligence and State Security Service.

• “We have reasonable suspicions that Vulin gave instructions not to obstruct the activities of Wagner’s group in Serbia,” he said.

Stojkovic said Botsan-Kharchenko, who enjoys diplomatic immunity, cannot be prosecuted in Serbia, but should be ordered to leave the country.

After filing a criminal case, the Prosecutor General of Serbia decides whether to open a criminal investigation.

Neither the Russian embassy in Belgrade nor the State Intelligence and Security Agency responded to Reuters’ request for comment.

“Why are you Wagners calling someone from Serbia when you know it’s against our laws?”

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic on Monday called on Russia to stop trying to recruit Serbian citizens into Wagner’s mercenary group, Reuters reported.

Vucic criticized Russian websites and social media groups in Russia for publishing an advertisement in Serbian in which Wagner’s group, led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, calls for Serbian volunteers to join the paramilitary organization.

“Why are you people from Wagner calling someone from Serbia when you know it’s against our laws?” Vucic said during a Monday night broadcast on Happy TV in Serbia’s capital, Belgrade.

Serbian volunteers have been fighting in Donbas alongside pro-Russian separatists since 2014, following the outbreak of insurgents in eastern Ukraine and the illegal annexation of Crimea.

Although the exact number of Serbs participating in the hostilities in Ukraine on the side of Moscow is unknown, it is believed that over the past 9 years dozens of Serbian citizens have signed up.

Serbs are forbidden to fight in foreign conflicts

Serbian law prohibits the country’s citizens from participating in conflicts abroad, and over the years several people have been convicted of violating these laws.

In turn, the Minister of Defense of Serbia, Miloš Vucevich, warned the citizens of the country not to go to military service in Ukraine.

“This will lead to legal consequences when they are brought to justice by public authorities,” he told Radio Free Europe.

However, President Vučić denied the Wagner group’s presence in Serbia, a country where ultra-nationalist pro-Kremlin groups have expressed support for the invasion of Ukraine.

On Tuesday, RIA Novosti, one of Russia’s state-run news agencies, published a video of two masked men who identified themselves as Serbian volunteers at a training center in Zaporizhzhia, one of four Ukrainian regions that Vladimir Putin declared annexed by Russia on September 30.

How Serbia is trying to juggle between the EU and Russia

Although Serbia is a candidate country for joining the European Union, its main trade and investment partner, it maintains close economic and military ties with Russia and refuses to comply with Western sanctions against Moscow.

In addition, in September of last year, Serbia announced that it will organize regular consultations with Russia on foreign policy issues, an official agreement was signed by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Serbia, Nikola Selakovic, and his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov.

Last Friday, the US again called on Serbia to impose sanctions against Russia, saying that it should be punished as an aggressor country.

“Russian activity should not only be condemned, but also punished. Russia has unleashed a brutal and illegal war,” US State Department adviser Derek Chollet told the press in Belgrade after a visit to the capital of Serbia.

Scholle also warned that Wagner, a Russian paramilitary group close to the Kremlin, is trying to recruit mercenaries in Serbia and other parts of the world, and that the US is “working with Serbia and other countries to put an end to this activity.”