Mini-state as a spy stronghold?: How San Marino became a friend of Russia

Mini-state as a spy stronghold?
How San Marino became a friend of Russia

By Kevin Schulte
May 8, 2024, 6:28 p.m

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San Marino has maintained remarkably close ties with Russia for decades. The focus is on several people who the dwarf state employs as ambassadors. Their connections to the Kremlin raise questions.

San Marino is the fifth smallest country in the world. The dwarf state is completely surrounded by Italy, is 61 square kilometers in size – and is therefore just as big as the Berlin district of Marzahn-Hellersdorf. Around 34,000 people live in San Marino, as many as in a small German town. The country rarely if ever makes headlines. And if so, then at most if the chronically unsuccessful national soccer team represents the colors of San Marino again – and loses. The team has only celebrated one win in 34 years.

But now the mini-country is also coming into political focus because San Marino is noticeably close to Russia. The roots of this bizarre friendship go back a long time. After the Second World War, the mini-state was a kind of communist island in Italy from 1947 to 1957. Between 1978 and 1986, San Marino was once again ruled by a left-wing popular front. During the Cold War, the state was at times a close ally of Moscow.

This proximity remained partly in the decades that followed – when San Marino had long since become a tax haven and a popular day trip destination for Rimini vacationers.

For centuries, San Marino has seen itself as a neutral country, similar to Switzerland. That is why it did not take part in the sanctions against Moscow in 2014 after Russia’s annexation of Crimea. In 2019, the small country invited Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and awarded him San Marino’s most important medal. During the pandemic, the world’s oldest republic purchased the Russian Sputnik vaccine against the coronavirus. In the same year, the world’s largest and fifth smallest countries also agreed to an agreement to abolish travel restrictions.

“An expression of San Marino’s unusual foreign policy”

A key figure in Russian-San-Marine relations is a man named Emmanuel Goutreports the British “Economist”. The 65-year-old Frenchman has been a special ambassador for the Republic of San Marino for just over two years.

Goût used to lobby with his PR company for Russian energy companies, among others, writes the “Economist”. He also helped set up the French branch of the Russian state television channel RT. In 2020 he was even granted Russian citizenship for his efforts.

It is completely unclear why a Frenchman with Russian citizenship became special ambassador to San Marino two years later. Apparently the government there did not know about his Russian citizenship. At the time of his appointment, Goût “did not declare any other nationalities,” San Marino’s Foreign Minister Luca Beccari told the Economist. Internal checks also did not reveal the Frenchman’s Russian passport. Foreign Minister Beccari explains as vaguely as possible: Goût has “many years of experience in numerous areas of interest to the Republic.”

The “Economist” analyzes that Goût’s personality is “an expression of San Marino’s unusual foreign policy.” Also because Goût is not the only San Marino envoy who had or has connections to Moscow. Igor Pellicciari has been San Marino’s ambassador to Jordan since 2019, and from 2014 to 2017 he was Russian honorary consul in the Italian city of Bologna, just 135 kilometers away.

It is also unusual that one of the richest Russians was the honorary consul of San Marino in Moscow for 20 years. Billionaire Vladimir Lissin has been the head of a Russian steel company since 1998. Although the 68-year-old has publicly criticized the Ukraine invasion, he is still being sanctioned by Australia for “carrying out an activity or performing a function that is of economic or strategic importance to Russia.” Lissin then resigned as honorary consul on his own initiative. San Marino did not act earlier because Lissin “does not appear in the EU’s sanctions, to which San Marino is a party,” as Foreign Minister Beccari told The Economist.

“Haven for espionage”

In the meantime, San Marino has softened its neutral position somewhat. The tiny state is now also taking part in the sanctions against Russia – in response to the major attack on Ukraine.

But there are also signs that San Marino still has close ties to Russia. San Marino has “long been a haven for espionage,” the Economist quotes a former Italian secret service officer as saying. Russian agents used San Marino as a place “to discuss what they were planning to do in Italy.”

Is San Marino a Russian spy hotspot? The Economist quotes a senior Ukrainian intelligence official as saying that the lack of attention Europe is paying to San Marino’s foreign policy is a “cause for concern.”