The Russian community in Serbia, afraid to deal with politics

Between 80,000 and 110,000 Russians live in Serbia and are largely uninterested in politics, according to a survey by the unofficial Belgrade Centre for Security Policy (BCBP).

“They probably have a double fear in Serbia, of the Kremlin’s long arm and of the local regime and secret services. This motivates them not to interfere in these matters”, said Srđan Cvijić, one of the authors of the study “Non-malicious influence: what the Russian community in Serbia thinks and does”.

Since 24 February 2022 and the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Serbian state has denied hospitality to a number of Russians who have fled to Serbia on the grounds that they pose a risk to national security. Most of them were opponents of the war in Ukraine and human rights activists.

Young, educated, working in the IT industry

The BCSP survey showed that Serbia has a younger and more educated population of Russians working mainly in the IT sector. In the survey, they expressed liberal and pro-democratic views and opposition to the policies of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In Serbia, they refuse to answer questions about Putin, any activism, and that is why they are not even at the student protests after the death of 15 people at the Novi Sad train station on 1 November.

“They simply don’t want to take risks. Their activities could attract the attention of the regime in Russia for which they left. This will change when they get a better status in Serbia, such as citizenship. Right now they just want to live their lives and be left alone,” said Maxim Samorukov, a Carnegie Endowment for Peace Fellow, at the launch of the BCSP report.

They would return if the war in Ukraine stopped.

The BCSP reported that since the start of the Russian aggression against Ukraine, more than 67,000 Russians have been granted temporary residence permits in Serbia by the end of 2024. 85% of them live in Belgrade.

Some 73% of Russians in Serbia prioritise their standard of living and more than half of those surveyed would not return to Russia now because they would not feel safe, according to the BCSP.

“We also asked them to assess where today’s Russia is heading. The majority of Russians in Serbia assessed that it is going in the wrong direction,” said the report’s author, Kristina Nikolić.

Almost half plan to stay in Serbia for at least five more years. They would return, nearly 60% said in the BCSP survey, if the war in Ukraine were to end.

The BCSP has indicated that more than 650,000 people have left Russia since the attack on Ukraine in 2022. Most of them have gone to Kazakhstan, Georgia, Armenia, Turkey, Germany and Serbia.

The Russian Federation and Serbia have had close political and economic relations since the rise to power of Aleksandar Vucic and his Serbian Progressive Party in 2012.

Serbia is the only candidate country for EU membership, alongside Turkey, that has not joined Brussels’ sanctions against Russia.

Expulsions from Serbia from the summer of 2023.

In the summer of 2023, Serbia started to ban the entry of Russian citizens who oppose the war in Ukraine. The measures of hospitality denial or expulsion were taken after the US imposed sanctions against the then director of Serbia’s Security Intelligence Agency (BIA), Aleksandar Vulin, for his links to Russia.

Anti-war activist Ilja Zernov left Serbia after being denied entry by border police at Belgrade airport in November 2023.

Before him, Vladimir Volokhonski and Yevgeny Izharsky left Belgrade permanently in September. They were denied or deprived of their temporary residence rights by the authorities in Belgrade. The justification given in the decisions was “the existence of a security obstacle to staying in Serbia”.

Aleksandar Vulin resigned as Director of the BIA in November 2023, a few months after the US blacklisted him. On the eve of the second anniversary of the Russian aggression against Ukraine, he received medals from Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) for “friendship and outstanding contribution to cooperation between Serbian and Russian services”./RSE/