ReportageActive opponents of the Kremlin, simple teleworkers, refugees in transit: young Russians discover in Belgrade an environment favorable to the Russian president and to the war in Ukraine.
The bar is typical of those trendy places in Belgrade hidden in the courtyard of a building known only to regulars in the Serbian capital. For several weeks, every Thursday evening, it has become the discreet meeting point for Russians who have fled their homeland to land in the last country in Europe to maintain direct air links with Moscow and Saint Petersburg. Around a beer, Thursday, May 19, a dozen Russians discuss, cautiously, this astonishing host country which welcomes them with open arms for an unexpected reason: public opinion there is massively pro-Russian.
“It’s very contradictory. recognizes Arthur Zalevsky, a 31-year-old biologist who left Moscow in early March. The Serbs are very nice, everyone tries to help us, but afterwards you see demonstrations and lots of pro-Putin graffiti in the street. » He left Russia two weeks after the outbreak of war in Ukraine, more out of fear of being blocked in his scientific career than out of real political conviction. “I am certainly part of this community of Muscovites who demonstrated in 2012 [contre le président Vladimir Poutine], but above all I was afraid that it would become much harder to leave the country if I didn’t leave right away. » In Belgrade, he is now waiting to receive an American visa to join the postdoctoral position he won at a university in San Francisco.
A dynamic figure in this nascent community, the 30-year-old Marina Bulganina has “all sold” in Moscow to come and settle in Belgrade in March, where she rents a former youth hostel which she dreams of transforming into a collective living space for Russians who have fled Putin. “For years, I saw things getting worse”, says this former travel agent, who claims to have prepared her departure in the summer, during a scouting trip to the Balkans. His first roommate, Kiril Dobriakov, a 24-year-old computer scientist who works for Reddit, an American forum site, arrived in Serbia after transiting in Turkey and in Budva, Montenegro, a seaside resort that has become a place of refuge for opponents of the war in Ukraine. Like many Russian computer scientists working for American companies, he was offered by his employer to move abroad to circumvent the sanctions imposed in Washington against Moscow since the beginning of the conflict.
“Bad Seeds”
Not all Russians in Belgrade are fierce opponents of the regime, but they embody a Moscow urban class that often has the ability to work remotely. Their number is unknown, but since the start of the conflict, the local commercial register has recorded hundreds of business start-ups by Russians, and real estate agents are reporting a sharp rise in rental prices.
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