Despite having a developed combat school of its own, Russia and affiliated structures have already used foreign training sites in Europe to prepare people for coercive and combat tasks. One documented case came in 2024, when Moldovan law-enforcement agencies uncovered the recruitment and training of citizens at facilities in Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina linked to private military structures.
In early September 2026, The Telegraph published information from an intelligence memorandum prepared for Australian intelligence and its Five Eyes partners — the intelligence alliance of the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The document is based on accounts from former special-forces operators who were offered instructor work at training centres in Bulgaria and Serbia. It assesses the possible use of these sites to train Russian citizens, including serving military personnel. According to 7NEWS, veterans of elite units from Britain, Australia and the United States — the British SAS, the Australian Commando Regiment and the U.S. Navy SEALs — may have been involved in training Russians at the Bulgarian centre. Attention focused on the private centre Alfa-Metal, located near the village of Mezhdeni in Bulgaria’s Gabrovo Province, which appears in the memorandum as one of these sites.
Alfa-Metal offers a wide range of military-tactical training, including courses for special-forces operators, snipers, UAV operators, bodyguards and prospective employees of private military companies. The document indicates that the training centre has accepted Russian citizens since at least 2025. Among the programmes Russians may have taken is advanced close-quarters combat (CQC) training.
Despite Alfa-Metal’s denials of Russian ties, The Telegraph found open-source evidence of years-long cooperation between the centre and Russian structures. The website of the North-West branch of the Association of Veterans of the Alpha anti-terrorist unit states that the Bulgarian centre opened a representative office in St Petersburg on the premises of the Alfa Region training centre, which was established under that same veterans’ association and involved its members. Among the association’s stated tasks is explicit support for the current Directorate “A” of the FSB Special Purpose Centre of Russia.
After The Telegraph put the Alfa Region partnership materials to Alfa-Metal, representatives of the Bulgarian centre acknowledged that “historical professional contacts” had previously existed between the organisations. This is therefore not merely isolated contact with a Russian private company, but an Alfa-Metal representative office based at a structure tied to the veteran community of one of the FSB’s key special units.
The intelligence memorandum states that veterans of the British Special Air Service, the Australian Commando Regiment and the U.S. Navy SEALs may have been brought in to work at Alfa-Metal. Two former Australian special-forces operators and a current reservist said they were offered instructor jobs at training camps in Bulgaria and Serbia where, according to available information, Russian clients were trained or were due to be trained. Alfa-Metal denies that it hired SAS veterans.
The potential involvement of instructors with that combat experience is what makes the story especially sensitive. Even short private courses can transfer far more advanced skills than basic weapons handling: building-assault tactics, small-unit operations, sniper training, close-quarters combat, tactical medicine and drone use. Those skills have direct military value and can later be used both to train other service members and in combat on the front line.
The same intelligence document mentions training structures in Serbia, though their names are not disclosed in the public portion of The Telegraph reporting. The description, however, largely matches the Serbian organisation EBSSA — the European Bodyguard & Security Service Association — which specialises in military-tactical training. In the public domain, EBSSA offers Close Quarter Battle courses in Serbia, firearms-instructor training, and a programme called Russian Military Combat System, which the organisation itself presents as an intensive course built on Russian special-forces methods. Such a course was already held in Serbia in March 2026, with another scheduled for October.
The Russian component in EBSSA’s catalogue does not stop there. The organisation also lists a course called Russian Secret Service Tactical Weapons, with sessions planned in Serbia in 2026. In parallel, the centre runs standard military-tactical programmes — CQB, tactical shooting and assault-group training.
The Alfa-Metal case points to a wider gap in Europe’s security system: the private market for military training can create channels for transferring combat skills to people and structures linked to Russia, outside traditional state-control mechanisms. Formally independent centres can simultaneously recruit veterans of Western special units and maintain long-standing contacts with Russia’s security community. Even if some of the claims in the intelligence memorandum still require confirmation, the established ties between Alfa-Metal, Alfa Region and the FSB veterans’ association already raise the question of how far European states control who is trained at private military centres, with whose money, and for what purposes. Amid Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine, that gap is already a security risk for Europe as a whole.
