There’s a guy who comes to my gym sauna every week whose behaviour baffles me. He wears a felt cone hat in the blazing heat, and jumps around a lot while the rest of us sit sedate. Sometimes he whorls his towel above his head to get the steam going, or tears his fingernails scratching the dead skin off his back. When he’s done in the sauna, he pelts towards the cold pool, holds his breath and plunges in. There he lies face down like a corpse, hair drifting.
‘It looks like he’s training for a penal colony,’ remarked a fellow gym-goer, who’d come to gently steam after lunch, beer in hand.
He could be right. Our sauna companion is one of around 300,000 Russians who fled their country for Belgrade at the outset of war with Ukraine. The migrants came in two waves – those who left upon the outbreak in February 2022, and those who escaped mass conscription the following September – and fall broadly into three categories: political dissidents, non-activist war objectors, and those who, for some reason or other, would like to just stay out of it.
I first met some of Belgrade’s new Russians in April 2023. I’d booked an Airbnb while finding a permanent flat, but when I arrived there were two other guests. They introduced themselves as Alex and Max, from Georgia and the USA respectively, but their accents – and sky high cheekbones – were suspiciously Slavic.
Eventually they admitted they were from Moscow, full names Alexei and Maxim, and they were thrilled I had lived in London. They were obsessed with Fred Again, and wanted to hear everything about the British music scene. Soon the communal vibe of the flat, smoothed by wine and stories, put us all at ease.
The pair had never travelled outside of Russia before that second wave of migration. At 28, they’d grown up only knowing Putin as president. They opposed the war – both had friends or family from Ukraine – but only the threat of conscription shook them from their stable lives in Moscow, where they’d lived as well-paid IT employees giving little thought to politics. To them, the idea that Ukraine was somehow part of Russia was ‘outdated, something from Soviet times’. But neither felt empowered to do anything, except ‘wait for Putin and this old generation to die’.
When mobilisation began, Alexei grabbed one small backpack and ran to the border of Georgia on foot, travelling alone. The traffic queue was four days long, and it was forbidden to cross the checkpoint without a car. He camped by the road, fearing a conscription ticket from the Russian police. Eventually he paid the Georgian mafia thousands of euros to smuggle him through the border. Max, meanwhile, was lucky enough to catch the last flight to Tbilisi, while leaving his girlfriend in Moscow. Once in Georgia, they hopped between Airbnbs, living in fear and uncertainty. ‘It was a tough time,’ said Alex, screwing up his delicate features.
We kept in touch after our Airbnb stay, sharing updates on Belgrade life. When Alex found a flat, he sent me a photo of him and his Serbian landlord at 10am sharing shots of rakia – Serbian plum brandy – while he handed over wads of euros. ‘My landlord drinks this every morning, he says it’s the Balkan’s key to virility. Also he loves Putin, thinks he’s a great guy.’
