“There is no clear picture what they were doing,” said Sanja Skuletic-Malagic, a spokeswoman for the foreigners service department at the security ministry in Sarajevo. The Serb information and culture ministry said some of the group were taken to see Orthodox churches and monasteries, but did not say how many went sightseeing. It is also unclear what the roughly 100 Cossacks who did not take part in either performance got up to during their stay. If the Djakonov Cossacks did not fly 1,000 miles from Russia to display their dancing skills, then the real purpose of their trip remains unexplained. Another unimpressed local said: “It was like a comedy film, where the heroes have to dress up and pretend to be something that they’re not.” “There were very handsome in their costumes, but they couldn’t dance,” said Natasa, a Banja Luka woman who watched the performance. When they did attempt to take a few steps it was mostly to follow the lead of a group of local Serb women in traditional dress who took part in the event. They turned out in old-fashioned satin tunics and shaggy sheepskin hats, and showed few signs of ever having danced before. If so, the Cossacks did little to support the Serb authorities’ claim that they were a cultural troupe. The march of love in Banja Luka, which was hastily arranged with no prior publicity, may have been intended to prove the Cossacks’ benign intent. Reports in the Sarajevo press about the Cossacks’ arrival described them as “special forces” and revealed that the group’s leader, Nikolai Djakonov, had led an armed unit that took part in the invasion and annexation of Crimea in the spring. About 30 of the visitors took part in what was billed as “the Russian-Serbian March of Love” on 5 October in a central square in Banja Luka, the main town in the semi-autonomous Serb half of Bosnia, and a dance a week later to mark the end of what was supposed to have been a week marking the first world war centenary.
The first of a group of more than 120 Russian Cossacks have left Bosnia after a mysterious fortnight-long visit that was officially for a cultural festival but which triggered reports of a Crimea-style “special forces” intervention in support of Serb separatism.Īmid the confusion one thing eventually became clear: the Cossacks could not dance.
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