Russians find refuge from Putin in Europe’s new ‘Casablanca’

BELGRADE – Sitting behind an outsized black wooden desk next to stacks of papers, Belgrade lawyer Tijana Vujovic says she already has another five meetings with potential new clients in her diary for the next day. Four of them are Russian.

The 36-year-old specialises in immigration, getting people the right paperwork and hooking them up with real estate agents in a city that’s quietly turned into a welcoming haven for thousands of Russians since President Vladimir Putin’s

invasion of Ukraine eight months ago.

The new arrivals have flocked to communal work spaces, registered more than 2,000 businesses and even given a boost to the property market. More are now looking to settle for the longer term in the wake of Mr Putin’s military mobilisation of citizens in September.

“At the beginning of the war, all clients requested to rent a place,” Ms Vujovic, who reckons she has dealt with at least 500 Russians this year, said at her office in an apartment building in central Belgrade. “In the last months, I’ve had a lot of requests from them to purchase, and not just to gain residency, but to live.”

The moves, coupled with Mr Putin’s escalating attacks in Ukraine, have made Serbia’s relationship with Russia an increasingly uncomfortable one.

Leaders in the European Union, which Serbia ultimately wants to join, have warned President Aleksandar Vucic his country needs to make up its mind which side it is on as he resists joining sanctions against Moscow. But the vein of pro-Russian – if not pro-Putin – sentiment runs deep in Belgrade.

“Belgrade has been like Casablanca in recent weeks,” Ms Vucic said on Oct 17 in a speech at Serbia’s intelligence and security agency, likening the city depicted in the 1942 film as a place swarming with spies and war refugees.

More than 100,000 Russians and several hundred Ukrainians have come to Serbia since the conflict started, of whom 17,000 have received residence permits, according to Ms Vucic. The rest moved on to other countries, or remained in Serbia as visitors.

“When we have guests from Russia, we discover those from Western services who tail them,” he said. “When we have guests from the West, then the other ones tail them.”

Russian presence is not hard to spot

Much of Europe embraced Russian aristocrats and intellectuals fleeing the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. Yet, a century or so later, those escaping the politics of their homeland have few options in Europe.

Serbia, though, allows Russians to enter the country visa-free for an initial 30 days, and its national airline has maintained routes to Moscow and three other Russian cities.

Russian presence in Belgrade, a city of about 1.4 million people, is not hard to spot. One landmark is the art nouveau Hotel Moskva, while the Ruski Dom, or Russia House, cultural centre is just down the road. Energy giant Gazprom sponsors Red Star Belgrade, the country’s most successful soccer team.

Those ties have a long history.

Serbia revived its relationship with fellow Orthodox Russia in the 1990s during Yugoslavia’s bloody breakup, when parts of the federation gained independence with Western support.

Attempts by strongman Slobodan Milosevic to challenge that on the battlefield triggered sanctions and isolation. Serbs looked east for support, gaining Russian backing during Nato’s bombing in 1999 to end the conflict in Kosovo.

Interviews with some of the Russians who have recently decamped are just happy to have found such a welcoming place.

Mr Mikhail Korostikov, 33, was head of international ESG cooperation at Sberbank in Moscow. He started looking for a new job on Feb 25, the day after Russian invaded Ukraine, and embarked on learning Serbian in earnest the same week.

Getting a new position was not easy because hiring a Russian was suddenly not worth the risk, he said.

Mr Korostikov, whose wife is Serbian, arrived in Belgrade in June and now works remotely for a Britain-based climate NGO.

“If you go to a co-working space, all you hear is Russian,” said Mr Korostikov, sitting in a bar in Vracar, an affluent residential area of central Belgrade. Everyone treats you like a neighbour, he said, recounting how he was even offered free food at a market when they found out he was Russian.

“I’ve never felt a single pinch of negative feeling toward me,” he said. “I’m telling people, ‘Guys, there’s a wonderful country; maybe a little bit messy’,” he said.

Hello, comrade’

On arrival, like many Russians, Mr Korostikov had 30 days before he needed a new stamp in his passport. That also proved easy. Russians in Belgrade have formed groups on the encrypted messaging service Telegram and offer spaces in cars doing day trips to the border, he said.

On one trip to Bosnia, he walked around for 10 minutes and then crossed back into Serbia.

The border guard joked, “Hello, comrade”, Mr Korostikov said.

Belgrade allows the new arrivals to find relatively affordable accommodation, at least compared with Moscow, a chance to resettle, start a business or at least ponder their next move.

Russians have set up 2,321 small firms and companies in Serbia in 2022, mostly in Belgrade, a surge from just 158 in all of 2021, according to Serbia’s Business Registry.

Belgrade-based WeShare, which manages office space in a gleaming tower right across the Serbian parliament building, got 60 new Russian customers since the war in Ukraine began, up from just a few before the conflict.

Many are looking to locate their businesses at WeShare sites, either to physically use the space or just the address, said founder and company owner Leon Pantelic.

“It’s an amazing surge in demand, and we’re getting seven to eight new inquiries every week,” he said.

Meanwhile, Russians have moved the property market, with rental prices more than doubling in Belgrade on soaring demand, according to Ms Katarina Lazarevic, who runs one of the city’s prominent real estate agencies.

An average one-bedroom apartment in central Belgrade has gone from 300 euros (S$419) a month to at least 600 euros, she said, pricing out many locals in a city where average net monthly salary is around 800 euros.

The Russians have come in three waves, she said.

First, it was mostly professionals or wealthy individuals moving their businesses to escape sanctions, then families over the summer and now – the biggest wave – since Mr Putin ordered the country to mobilise.

“Everything that comes to the market is snapped up instantly,” said Ms Lazarevic. “Soon, there’ll be nothing left to offer to them in Belgrade.” BLOOMBERG