
The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense (GUR) have collected evidence linking Serbian mercenary Davor Savicic to war crimes committed during the Russian occupation of the Kiev region in February-March 2022.
According to the Ukrainian platform The Book of Executioners, the investigation accuses Savicic of mistreatment of civilians in the Vyshhorod and Bucha regions, during the first phase of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Ukrainian authorities describe two main episodes.
In one case, on March 3, 2022 in the village of Fedorivka, Russian soldiers under the command of Savicic discovered a local resident who had been hiding from the shelling along with other people inside a concrete pipe.
According to the investigation, the Serbian mercenary ordered the man to strip down to his underwear, while the soldiers confiscated his phone, tied his hands and took him to a forest area between the villages of Shybene and Krasnyi Rih.
Ukrainian prosecutors allege the man was tied to a tree and held under death threats for hours, before being interrogated about the location of Ukrainian forces and forced to make false statements to Russian media.
When he refused, according to the charges, he was beaten and then forced to stay for days in extreme conditions, with minimal food and water.
Another episode concerns a woman from Ivankiv, who according to Ukrainian investigators was illegally detained on March 5, 2022, and then sent for questioning by Savicic.
The investigation alleges that he demanded information on the Armed Forces of Ukraine and forced the woman to participate in a staged propaganda interview, while threatening her to intimidate her.
On May 22, Savicic was officially notified of the suspicions against him under Article 438 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, for violating the laws and customs of war.
According to data published by Ukrainian authorities, Davor Savicic, born in Bosnia and Herzegovina and with dual Russian and Bosnian citizenship, lives in Russia and holds the rank of colonel in the Russian private military company "Redut".
He also turns out to have been part of the Serbian paramilitary formation "Arkan's Tigers", while he has previously been linked by the media to fighters from the Russian mercenary group Wagner in Syria and to Russian operations in Donetsk and Luhansk since 2014.
According to the investigation, during the 2022 invasion, he commanded the sabotage and reconnaissance unit "Volka", which operated as part of the Russian military group "Vostok" and participated in the occupation of areas in the Kiev and Zhytomyr regions.