In Balkans Tour, Russia’s Night Wolves, a Bike Gang, Are More Bark Than Bite Photo Members of the Night Wolves motorcycle gang visiting a monastery in Serbia. The gang’s tour, funded with a grant from the Kremlin, was billed as a “pilgrimage” meant to showcase the shared Orthodox faith of Russia and the region. Credit Laura Boushnak for The New York Times BANJA LUKA, Bosnia and Herzegovina — The Night Wolves, a Russian motorcycle gang known as “Putin’s Angels” and widely feared as agents of meddling and mayhem beyond Russia’s borders, provoked more bemusement and giggles than awe on their latest outing, a nine-day tour of the Balkans designed to show that Russia still had some fervent friends left in Europe.
Instead of roaring into town amid throbbing engines and clouds of smoke, the tattooed, potbellied bikers arrived by car and minivan in Banja Luka, the capital of Republika Srpska, a would-be state born in bloodshed during the Balkan wars of the 1990s.
Anxious about the cold weather..