In late January, members of the Serb community in Moscow gathered in a church in the Russian capital to remember St. Sava, the first archbishop of the Serbian Orthodox Church in the early 13th Century.
Among the silent worshippers was a 29-year-old man called Momcilo Gajic, pictured tall and solemn next to the Church’s most senior representative in Russia, the head of the Church of Peter and Paul, Bishop Stefan.
Such a prominent position is a sign of Gajic’s standing in the church community, as is a decision by the church – reported on its website – to bestow upon him the honour of ‘hosting’ next year’s St. Sava Day celebration alongside the church.
Momcilo Gajic, far left, attending a liturgy at the Serbian Orthodox Church in Moscow in January 2026. Photo: Representation of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Moscow.
However, in the eyes of European law enforcement agencies, Gajic is not so virtuous.
According to court verdicts obtained by BIRN, he and another unidentified individual codenamed ‘Hunter’ are suspected of staging a string of stunts in France and Germany on the orders of Russian intelligence services, all with the aim of inciting religious and ethnic hatred.
They formed a group of at least 13 people, mostly men, who travelled to Paris and Berlin in spring and autumn last year.
The group is suspected of placing hundreds of stickers referring to the World War One mass killing of Orthodox Christian Armenians by Ottoman Turks all over the French capital’s 18th arrondissement, home to a large Muslim community; of tossing green paint – a colour associated with Islam – over Jewish religious sites in Paris, the Holocaust Museum and Jewish restaurants; of placing pig heads outside mosques across Paris, scribbled with the names of French politicians and the date ‘September 10’, when mass protests had been called against austerity measures; and, in Berlin, placing five plastic skeletons in plastic containers in front of the Brandenburg Gate, near the city’s Holocaust Memorial, bearing the words ‘I’m still waiting for my pension. Thank you, Merz’.
In September last year, acting on warrants issued by the High Prosecution Office in the Serbian town of Smederevo, Serbian police arrested 11 alleged members of the group, but not Gajic or the person known as Hunter. A police statement at the time said a suspect it identified by the initials M.G. was “on the run” and suspected of “acting on behalf of a foreign service”.
In December, three of the 11 agreed plea deals and were convicted by the High Court in Smederevo of espionage, membership of a criminal organisation and racial and other discrimination.
In the three verdicts, issued on December 22 and 24 and obtained by BIRN, the court states that Gajic and ‘Hunter’ “received orders, instructions and financial funds from the Russian Federation’s intelligence service”. The verdicts were first reported on by Radio Free Europe.
It is unclear how Gajic evaded arrest. BIRN could not reach him for comment but tracked him to Moscow using Open-Source Intelligence tools. Asked to confirm whether a warrant had been issued for his arrest, the court in Smederevo referred BIRN to the prosecution, which did not respond.
The Russian Foreign Ministry did not respond to requests for comment. The Foreign Intelligence Service, SVR, merely referred BIRN to its “current commentary on international affairs” on its website, but there is no reference there to the case involving Gajic.
In Moscow, Gajic has some powerful friends. Bishop Stefan, who studied in the Russian capital in the 2000s, was previously head of the St. Sava Temple in Belgrade and personally received Vladimir Putin during the Russian president’s last visit to Serbia in November 2019.
Bishop Stefan, then head of the Church of St. Sava in Belgrade, speaking with Vladimir Putin. Photo: RTS YouTube channel/Screenshot.
‘Destabilisation operations’
The stunts Gajic is accused of staging bear all the hallmarks of what European law enforcement agencies say has been a string of Kremlin-sponsored vandalism operations in recent years.
In 2023, in the wake of the October 7 attack on Israel by the Palestinian militant group Hamas, around 250 blue Stars of David were stencilled on walls across Paris; Moldovan businessman Anatolii Prizenko claimed responsibility, but media reports pinned it on the Russian intelligence service GRU. The European Union said it had a “significant destabilising effect in the context of the conflict between Israel and Hamas” in Gaza, where Israel unleashed a massive military operation in which more than 72,000 Gazans were killed.
In May 2024, a Bulgarian group painted red handprints on the Paris Holocaust Memorial and several other buildings. Four men were later jailed in a verdict that linked the vandalism to Russia. One of them was Mircho Angelov.
As BIRN has previously reported, both Prizenko and Angelov have been involved in Russian operations in Serbia and Bosnia, including camps run by Russian operatives that Moldovan authorities say were used to train Moldovans in destabilisation techniques ahead of Moldovan elections in 2024 and 2025. Prizenko is currently on trial in Moldova for his role in the camps; Angelov is accused in Moldova of acts of vandalism and was convicted in absentia in France for his role in the red handprints stint. He is currently on the run.
Politico quoted Moldovan investigators as saying the camps were part of “a coordinated Russia-backed effort to recruit operatives for destabilisation operations as far away as France and Germany”.
According to the three Smederevo court verdicts, Gajic paid his operatives between 500 and 1,500 euros each per operation, plus travel expenses. He did not personally take part but watched from a safe distance.
Surveillance cameras recorded a man photographing a pig’s head that he had previously placed in front of a mosque in Paris. Photo: TF1 Info YouTube channel/Screenshot.
He delegated recruitment to a man identified as Bogdan Djinovic, who found most of the most recruits in his hometown of Velika Plana, a town of some 15,000 people roughly 90 kilometres southeast of Belgrade and directly south of Smederevo. They included a local waiter and friend of Djinovic called Aleksandar Savic, who was later among the three who struck plea bargains.
Djinovic and two other members of the group were arrested in France on June 2. The Tribunal de Paris, which is handling the investigating, did not respond to requests for comment regarding the status of the case.
Savic was sentenced to 18 months in prison for espionage, membership of a criminal organisation and racial and other discrimination. The other two – Filip Petrovic and Nemanja Cevap – were sentenced to house arrest for a year and six months respectively, on the same charges.
The verdicts repeatedly state that Gajic and Hunter worked on the orders of and with funding from Russian intelligence services. The aim in Paris, the court found, was to “incite religious and ethnic intolerance and to destabilise the situation in Paris and the French Republic”.
Church-run rehab
Momcilo Gajic speaking about his teenage gaming, internet use and addiction, as well as the role of the Church in his rehabilitation, in an interview in 2017. Photo: IndijankaDanka YouTube channel/Screenshot.
Gajic’s connections to the Serbian Orthodox Church go back years.
In an interview on YouTube, Gajic says he was sent as a 15-year-old to a church-affiliated rehabilitation centre called Land of the Living near his hometown of Novi Sad, northern Serbia, because of an addiction to internet gaming. The centre is run by an NGO, whose legal representatives are listed as Serbian Patriarch Porfirije and a priest called Branko Curcin.
Gajic spent eight months at the centre. In 2017, he told a film crew that, before entering rehab, he was mixing in criminal circles and decided to seek help after he was shot out. He denied any personal involvement in crime and said he sang in a church choir.
After rehab, Gajic found work as a nightclub waiter. In 2015, a former Novi Sad city councillor registered an NGO on Gajic’s behalf. Gajic remained at the helm of the NGO, called Ravnicar, until 2018, when he was replaced by a man called Sava Curcin. It is unclear whether Sava is related to priest Branko Curcin, but social media posts suggest the priest has been engaged with the NGO and in February he blessed one of its initiatives that aim to safeguard Serbian traditions.
Since 2017, the NGO has received at least 36,000 euros in funding for a variety of projects from the City of Novi Sad.
In 2023, Gajic served as host of the Feast of the Ascension in Novi Sad’s church Temple of the Ascension, a role he will again play in Moscow on January 27 next year for St. Sava’s Day.
Priest Branko Curcin (left) and Momcilo Gajic (right, in black shirt) during the celebration of Spasovdan at the Ascension Church in Novi Sad, where Gajic was the designated host. Photo: Backa Eparchy
How BIRN traced the digital fingerprints
To identify and match members of the group allegedly organised by Gajic and ‘Hunter’, BIRN used osint.industries based on a publicly visible phone number, usernames, and an email address. PimEyes was used to match visual identities, GoodTape to generate transcripts of YouTube material, Google Maps and the cadastral register to verify locations, and NotebookLM to support the partial analysis of court documents.