Russian elites are obtaining Serbian passports with visa-free access to the EU during the war. Among them are an FSB special forces member, a friend of Nikolay Patrushev, nuclear weapons manufacturers, a close associate of Ramzan Kadyrov, and dozens of others.
“We said it would be great to get passports”
A Serbian passport opens up entry to the countries of the European Union and roughly a hundred other countries. Therefore, many want to obtain it — from the beginning of 2022 to April 2025, the government in Belgrade signed decrees granting Serbian citizenship to more than 330 people with the wording “in the interests of the republic” — this is just one of many grounds for obtaining a passport. 204 of these newly minted Serbs are Russians.
All these decrees were adopted in accordance with Article 19 of the Serbian Citizenship Law — it allows issuing passports for services to the country under a special procedure. A person is not required to renounce other citizenships, and they do not even need to live in Serbia either before or after receiving the passport. Usually, distinguished figures in business, science, sports, or the arts are granted citizenship in this way. Thus, during the war, Russian artists who decorated the Church of Saint Sava in Belgrade received citizenship.
Sports migration is a sign of the times. Dozens of officials and young Russian athletes — from MMA fighters and boxers to football players and chess players — have received Serbian passports since the beginning of the war, as they can no longer compete under the Russian flag. Even the multiple heavyweight mixed martial arts champion, the legendary Fedor Emelianenko, became a Serb in 2022, according to government documents. The fighter recently retired and said that he might move to the “Orthodox and long-suffering” Balkan country in case of a “force majeure” situation.
Another sign of the times is Russian IT specialists. Among those who received Serbian passports for services to the country during the war are founders of IT companies, as well as usual programmers and managers. The founder of a Russian IT startup, who recently became a Serbian citizen along with his business partner, told IStories on condition of anonymity that sometimes the initiative to issue a passport to such people comes directly from the government.
“We have been in Serbia since 2015, painstakingly and expensively building a market with our own money, a market where there was literally no one before us. We had social programs with the government, we worked with large local companies. At some point, the ministry we were working with suggested: ‘Let’s help you somehow.’ How can they help? I, for example, don’t even live in Serbia,” he says. “And so, after a while, we were told to come to Belgrade, be presentable, in ties, in suits, and so on. We arrived, met with the Prime Minister. She says: ‘Thank you, you have been known in Serbia for a long time, how can we help?’ We said it would be great to get passports. ‘Okay, we’ll try.’ That’s the whole story.”
According to him, the Prime Minister’s decision had nothing to do with the “passport in exchange for investment” program (which was never launched in Serbia): “We, of course, indirectly invested in production in the country, but we definitely didn’t receive passports for investments. We didn’t give anyone money and didn’t buy bonds, we’ve just been here for a long time.” The entrepreneur says that both Yandex and other Russian IT companies in the Serbian market are directly discussing the issuance of passports with the government, and sometimes even improving the tax climate for business.
We didn’t give anyone money and didn’t buy bonds, we’ve just been here for a long time
According to Serbian immigration lawyer Jana Polak, the process of obtaining citizenship when purchasing real estate or opening a business is generally not much different from the standard procedure, meaning that it’s not possible to simply buy a so-called golden passport. “If a person obtains citizenship as an owner of real estate, a company [but not of national scale], or as a sole proprietor, the law is interpreted as follows: before submitting a request, the applicant must have permanent resident status for at least three years, and before that, reside almost continuously for three years with temporary resident status. A permanent address can only be held by a foreigner with permanent resident status,” she explains.
The Serbian government wanted to launch golden passport programs in 2022 and then significantly simplify the issuance of citizenship to Russians working in the country, reducing the residency period before applying for citizenship to one year. But, as the Financial Time, the European Commission put pressure on Belgrade. They threatened to suspend the Serbia-EU visa-free regime, if the granting of citizenship through investor schemes is deemed to pose an increased risk to the internal security and public policy of the Member States of the European Union.
As IStories discovered, European countries still have something to fear. In hundreds of decisions on granting Serbian citizenship for services rendered from 2022 to April 2025, the names of dozens of Russians closely connected to the military-industrial complex, the Kremlin, oligarchs, state corporations, and even special services are listed. None of them appear on sanctions lists and, therefore, can travel freely with a Serbian passport.
Athletes
Sports migration to Serbia has enabled officials associated with the Russian Boxing Federation (RBF) and the International Boxing Association (IBA) to obtain passports. Until 2021, the RBF was headed by Moscow region entrepreneur Umar Kremlev (formerly Lutfulloev). He now manages boxing tournaments at the international level as the head of the IBA.
In the mid-2010s, Kremlev met FSO General and Putin’s chief bodyguard Alexey Rubezhnoy at the Night Wolves biker club. Since then, they have worked together in the Russian Boxing Federation, and Kremlev gained access to the authorities. After the start of the war, at Rubezhnoy’s suggestion, the country’s leadership gave him the assets of the country’s largest car dealer, Rolf, which had previously confiscated from the real owners by the state/
Several people close to Kremlev became Serbian citizens and gained visa-free access to the European Union.
For instance, Alexey Galeev, an honored coach of Russia, became a citizen of the Balkan republic. He trained famous boxers Dmitry and Fedor Chudinov, Andrey Sirotkin, and Vladimir Shishkin, and also worked for many years at the Serpukhov boxing academy Olymp. His student was a young Umar Kremlev, who today publishes photos with his coach.
Kremlev’s deputy in the IBA, North Caucasian functionary Abdulmutalim Abakarov, recived a Serbian passport back in 2021. His two sons and daughter received citizenship in 2022.
The Kremlin is also entering the leadership of the European Boxing Confederation. Along with him, the organization is managed by Sumaid Khalidov, who became a Serbian citizen in 2023. Khalidov is a Chechen boxer and a member of the executive committee of the Russian Boxing Federation, who organized a European boxing tournament in Grozny in honor of Akhmat Kadyrov, an event opened by Ramzan Kadyrov.
Another newly minted Serb from the Russian boxing industry is Viktor Shendrik. Now a Serbian citizen, Shendrik heads the supervisory board of the Moscow Boxing Federation, and before that served in Vympel, the FSB’s “intellectual special forces.” Shendrik is also the head of security for Russian Railways and the former head of security for Putin’s friends, oligarchs Arkady and Boris Rotenberg. Shendrik, in the interests of the Rotenbergs, sponsors a neo-Nazi unit of football fans Espaniola fighting against Ukraine.
Access to the EU via a Serbian passport is now also available to the wives of defense industry figures. For example, Serbian citizenship was granted to Olga Reyman — the wife of former Russian Minister of Communications Leonid Reyman (1999–2008). Currently, Leonid Reyman owns the company Heliprome SPB, which services helicopters and aviation equipment for the Cosmonaut Training Center and the Russian National Guard. At least in the early 2010s, Reyman’s company collaborated with the Ministry of Defense.
The family of the next new Serbian citizen, Svetlana Perevalova, is also making money on construction in the captured Ukrainian regions. Her husband, Viktor Perevalov, founded the company Vysokokachestvennye Avtomobilnye Dorogi [“High-Quality Roads”], or VAD.
Major players in the development of occupied Ukrainian agricultural lands have also rushed to Europe. For example, Kirill Krattli, the husband of Anastasia, daughter of State Duma deputy Alexey Tkachev, received a Serbian passport. Alexey Tkachev is the brother of Alexander Tkachev, the ex-governor of the Krasnodar Krai and former Minister of Agriculture of Russia. The brothers are under EU sanctions.
Grain harvested in the occupied regions of Ukraine is being exported and provides Vladimir Putin with funds to finance the war. According to data from Ukrainian authorities, from the time of the invasion until 2024, Russian exporters removed at least 4 million tons of stolen Ukrainian grain from the occupied territories and supplied it to international markets, earning about $800 million.
In this context, it is interesting that a Serbian passport was obtained by Dmitry Sergeev — a friend of Deputy Prime Minister and former Russian Minister of Agriculture Dmitry Patrushev, the son of General Nikolay Patrushev, former director of the FSB, former head of the Russian Security Council and aide to Putin.
Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandar Vulin, who has headed the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Ministry of Defense, and Serbian counterintelligence at various times, has also long cooperated with Nikolay Patrushev. In 2021, Vulin personally flew to Moscow and handed over to Patrushev Sr. recordings of wiretaps from a seminar of the Russian opposition in Belgrade, organized by politicians Andrei Pivovarov and Vladimir Kara-Murza. After Vulin left, Andrei Pivovarov was arrested and soon sent to a Karelian penal colony. At the instigation of Vulin and Patrushev, the authorities of the Russian Federation and Serbia also created a “working group to combat color revolutions,” according to the Danas publication. Within this group, the special services of the two countries are supposed to prevent protests and organize surveillance of activists, journalists, and human rights defenders.