Belgrade Syndicate

“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. This follows from records in the official legal gazette of the Serbian authorities, access to which was provided to IStories by journalists from the Serbian Crime and Corruption Reporting Network (KRIK).

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.

Not only IT specialists are relocating to Belgrade. In March 2025, it became known that the Russian chain of discount stores FixPrice, which moved to Kazakhstan after the start of the war and became the most profitable Russian franchise according to Forbes, is entering the Serbian market. At the very beginning of 2025, the co-founder of the chain, Sergey Lomakin — a Russian billionaire whose fortune is estimated at $1.2 billion — received citizenship “in the interests of Serbia.”

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 Times reported, 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 been confiscated from the real owners by the state, according to Proekt.

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, received 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. As previously reported by IStories, Shendrik, in the interests of the Rotenbergs, sponsors a neo-Nazi unit of football fans Espaniola fighting against Ukraine.

Defense industry workers

Managers and employees of Russian defense enterprises and their relatives also sought Serbian passports and unimpeded entry into the European Union. The largest-scale migration affected people associated with the Concern Radio-Electronic Technologies (CRET) — the largest manufacturer of electronic warfare systems in Russia, as well as avionics for military aircraft and helicopters. CRET is part of the state-owned arms corporation Rostec, headed by Sergey Chemezov, Putin’s KGB colleague.

Thus, during the war, Serbian citizenship was obtained by Anastasia Kolesova — the daughter of the former head of CRET and ex-governor of the Amur Oblast, Nikolay Kolesov, who is under EU sanctions. Kolesov now heads the holding company Russian Helicopters, which owns most of the helicopter manufacturing enterprises in the country. Anastasia Kolesova’s mother Albina also became a Serbian citizen. At least until 2019, she received a salary at the Kazan Optical-Mechanical Plant (KOMZ), a manufacturer of weapon optics. Among other things, Anastasia Kolesova is the head of TatSotsBank and a former deputy of the State Council of Tatarstan.

Anastasia’s husband — current defense industry worker Nikolay Uraev — also received a Serbian passport along with his relative Nadezhda. Previously, Kolesova and Uraev alternately headed the Kazan defense plant Elekon, and Nadezhda Uraeva, judging by leaked income data, worked at this enterprise.

Elekon is a key manufacturer of electrical connectors in the Russian military-industrial complex. The plant makes components for intercontinental ballistic missiles Bulava and Topol-M, military aircraft, helicopters, submarines, ships, satellite systems, etc. It is under U.S. sanctions under the law on the non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and under EU, UK, and Canadian sanctions due to the invasion of Ukraine.

Uraev is also a former member of the board of directors of the KOMZ plant, which produces night vision devices, thermal imagers, and optical sights for weapons. He was also once the wealthiest deputy of the Kazan City Duma. Now Nikolay Uraev heads the Krasnogorsk Van Factory, which produces police vans, military trucks, mobile communication complexes, and other specialized army equipment based on KAMAZ, GAZ, and Ural vehicles.

CRET manager Ekaterina Blokhina also received Serbian citizenship. As follows from the company’s reports, Blokhina manages the administrative and economic departments of Elekon and CRET. The manager and her mother, Lyudmila Tenno, were co-owners of the company KOMZ-Baigysh, through which KOMZ’s weapon optics are sold.

Judging by the data from the SPARK counterparty verification system, Blokhina is also a member of the board of directors of the Mari El plant Kopir, which produces electrical connectors for aviation, missile, and marine equipment. Lyudmila and Ekaterina owned shares in the Ryazan Radaraviaservice, which repairs aviation equipment. In addition, Blokhina is the general director of the investment company Tavrida in occupied Crimea, which is owned by Ramenskoye Instrument-Making Design Office (part of Rostec, producing avionics for combat aircraft) and the defense company JSC “High Technologies” (aircraft maintenance).

A Serbian passport is now also held by Russian citizen Roman Karusev, who, according to leaked income information, received a salary from the Radioelektronika im. Shimko enterprise, part of CRET. This is the main producer of friend-or-foe identification systems for Russian combat aircraft.

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 and repairs 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.

A passport was also acquired by Svetlana Kiyko — the wife of Colonel General Mikhail Kiyko, the former deputy head of the Federal Drug Control Service. In 2016, Kiyko ranked fourth in the list of the wealthiest wives of Russian officials. Despite the absence of a major business, she declared an income of 548 million rubles — 156 times more than her husband.

After the disbandment of the drug police, Mikhail Kiyko became deputy general director of the defense concern Almaz-Antey — one of the largest manufacturers of anti-missile and air defense systems in the world. Until March 2023, Kiyko headed a structural subdivision of the defense concern Rostec — the holding company Mekhanika, which unites 14 Russian machine-tool plants, research and development units, and engineering companies, and serves the production of various weapons. Currently, Kiyko is the director of the group Aeromax, which develops airplane, helicopter, and drone-type unmanned aerial vehicles. Aeromax belongs to AFK “Sistema,” which is under sanctions by Britain and the U.S., but not the EU.

The list of new citizens mentions the name of Andrey Shamshurin. The business portal Tadviser calls him the vice-president of the Aquarius Group. This company was one of the first in the U.S.SR to start producing personal computers, and now it is engaged in radio-technical equipment: from servers to microchips and encrypted communication devices important for weapons production for Russian special services. In 2024, Aquarius, according to the publication Kommersant, began creating a production facility for microcontrollers for data encryption together with the state atomic energy corporation Rosatom. This was done to replace analogues unavailable due to sanctions. In 2022, Aquarius fell under U.S. sanctions for assisting the Russian army.

Another Serbian citizen connected with the Russian military-industrial complex is Alexey Lyamin. He heads the BelAZ trading house. This is a distributor of products from the Belarusian BelAZ, 30% of which is owned by the Presidential Sports Club of Alexander Lukashenko’s son, Dmitry. The BelAZ trading house also cooperates as a distributor with the Belshina enterprise, which supplies tires for vehicles of the Russian army, wrote the Belarusian Investigative Center.

Occupation workers

Another category of new Serbians are Russians who are directly or indirectly connected to profiting from the occupied Ukrainian territories.

One of them is Ivan Sibirev, a figure in an investigation by IStories. He previously headed Stroytransneftegaz, a company owned by close friend of Putin, Gennady Timchenko. As we found out, with the start of the full-scale war in Ukraine, Sibirev became a co-owner of the construction company R-Stroy, which operates in the Ukrainian cities of Mariupol and Severodonetsk, occupied and destroyed by the Russian army. R-Stroy was sanctioned by the EU in 2024.

Sibirev also owns the Wine & Crab restaurant together with Svetlana Kuznetsova — stepdaughter of Gazprom head Alexei Miller and daughter of Putin’s former secretary, Marina Entaltseva.

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. It earns money from road construction in annexed Crimea (revenue in 2020 — over 85 billion rubles): this company built the road across the Kerch Bridge, the Tavrida highway, and the road from Simferopol to the western coast of Crimea. Because of these projects, VAD fell under EU and U.S. sanctions back in 2018. Svetlana Perevalova, judging by leaked data from the Federal Tax Service and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, worked as a manager at VAD at least until 2018.

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.

Krattli heads the Krasnodar-Saratov company Mirtech and is engaged in the supply of agricultural machinery. This company cooperates with Russia’s largest agro-industrial holding Agrocomplex, owned by the Tkachev family, as revealed earlier by investigators from the publication Protokol.

Wall Street Journal states that Agrocomplex has acquired over 160,000 hectares of agricultural land in the occupied regions of Ukraine but is still not subject to sanctions. Krattli’s MirTech imports equipment and spare parts from Europe, Canada, Turkey, and South Korea into Russia and sells them to Agrocomplex and several sanctioned companies, including structures of Sberbank, VTB, and Gazprom, according to financial documentation of Krattli’s company accessed by Protokol journalists.

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.

Patrushev Jr. and Sergeev have been working together for a long time. From 2010 to 2018, when Patrushev headed Rosselkhozbank, Sergeev was his deputy. When Patrushev Jr. became Minister of Agriculture in 2018, Sergeev followed him into the government. Now Sergeev is the general director of the United Grain Company and the Grain Exporters Union, two key organizations in the supply of agricultural products to world markets.

Sergey Emdin, who received a Serbian passport in 2022, headed the VTB-created grain holding Demetra, which owns 50% minus one share in the United Grain Company, until the spring of 2023. After Emdin’s departure, VTB sold 45% of its grain holding, presumably to an Omani investment fund, the newspaper Vedomosti reported.

Demetra is one of the most important players in the grain export market. The company’s terminals can ship up to 15 million tons of grain per year (about 21% of Russia’s total grain exports). The holding also owns Rusagrotrans, a monopolist in the field of railway transportation of grain, and Demetra’s control in the United Grain Company gives direct access to a fleet of dry cargo ships.

Several Russian billionaires from the Forbes list and people formerly associated with managing the assets of oligarchs Alisher Usmanov and Alexei Mordashov also became citizens of the Balkan republic, however, there is no information about their current relationship with the Russian government.

Lubyanka’s assistance

Corruption researcher and head of the NGO Arktida Ilya Shumanov believes that such a mass issuance of passports to Russians associated with the Kremlin and the defense industry could have been part of political agreements between the two governments. In such a scenario, the Serbian government risks losing the prospects of European integration, but it can receive from Moscow tools of control in the context of mass anti-government protests that have not stopped in the country since the beginning of 2024, Shumanov says.

It was during the protests that there was a surge in the issuance of Serbian passports to Russians. Last year, 86 out of 137 new passports “for services rendered” were issued to Russians, more than 30 of these Russians are directly or indirectly connected with the Russian authorities and business giants. Parallel to the Serbian authorities issuing these passports, Nikolay Patrushev’s friend, Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandar Vulin, regularly traveled to Russia. He held official talks with the heads of the SVR and FSB, with Patrushev himself, with Sergei Shoigu, Sergei Lavrov, and Foreign Ministry officials. In March of this year, Vulin quite openly admitted that Russian intelligence officers were helping him suppress protests in Serbia.

“I think it is also about informal financial support, the provision of loans and credits that will go to support the regime. Plus, very lucrative contracts with Russian companies. Attracting Russian investment is one of the main hooks on which the Serbian authorities can be hung. There is political turbulence there. And Russia, for example, can provide tools for monitoring social networks. All the authoritarian practices that Russia could share will be very much in demand in Serbia. Starting from the monitoring system, ending with political technologies — for example, bot farms and so on,” Shumanov argues.

It is simply not possible to grant a passport, without even mentioning for decency’s sake what services a Russian citizen has rendered to Serbia, says Russian-Serbian political scientist Aleksandar Djokic. “When the relevant ministry recommends granting citizenship for services rendered, it must state a formal reason, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs is obliged to check the person for any threats,” he says.

Now, neither former FSB special forces officer Viktor Shendrik nor managers of key defense enterprises are prevented from traveling visa-free to EU countries with a Serbian passport, and the European Commission has no control instruments here, except for pressure. “Regarding the issuance of Serbian passports, the European Union is only concerned about possible mass migration from the Balkans. A potential problem could arise only from a hypothetical scandal involving FSB agents, but issuing passports to billionaires and oligarchs may not become such a problem — money always finds a loophole,” Djokic believes.

IStories sent their questions directly to representatives of the European Commission, as well as to the Russians with Serbian citizenship mentioned in this text, either personally or through their relatives and employers. We are ready to publish their substantive responses. Journalists from KRIK sent an official request to the Serbian government asking them to clarify what exactly the country’s interests are in granting citizenship to the listed Russians.