Among the Russians

A dive into the contested political energies of contemporary Belgrade.

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 To them, the idea that Ukraine was somehow part of Russia was ‘outdated, something from Soviet times’.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.’

Many Serbs view Russians as their Slavic Orthodox Christian brothers. Taxi drivers greet Russians warmly with: ‘Brate [brother] Putin is a hero!’ The country has historic bonds with Russia. In the past, Tsarist and Soviet forces aided the Serbs against invaders, from the Ottomans to the Nazis. After NATO bombed Belgrade in 1999 to end Milosevic’s war on Kosovo, many Serbs turned to Russia as allies and protectors. Serbian state media constantly regurgitates Russian propaganda, praising Putin for standing up to the West and to the ‘LGBTQ+ agenda’.

‘But why do you like Putin?’ Alex asked his Serbian landlord one day, who pondered the question for a moment before replying, ‘He’s not gay’. An awkward silence followed.

These creaks of unease from the refugee contingent have caused something of an identity crisis in more belligerently pro-Kremlin Serbs. Far-right groups and hooligans have sprayed Zs on the doors of anti-war activists, beat some up and called them ‘liberal traitors’. Serbian memes circulating through the usual channels describe newly-arrived Russian women as ‘scarecrows,’ in reference to the baggy clothes fashionable among the younger ones.

On the other hand, plenty of Serbs are fond of Russian culture but condemn the war, welcoming Ukrainians and Russians equally. A Serbian friend, Danjela, said: ‘We had war in the Balkans, we know how they feel. Nobody wants to die.’

At the start of the war in 2022, a peace coalition of Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians and Serbs staged protests in Belgrade. These activist gatherings were small, with just a couple of hundred attendees. They were soon shut down by Serbian counter-protests in support of Putin, and the deportation of four activists by Serbia’s intelligence minister (a feverish Kremlin ally & long-suspected asset). The anti-war movement went underground. Interestingly it was strongly women-led. Single women were more likely to have fled Russia for ideological and political reasons, given they were not threatened by mobilisation. For men, the motivation to leave could be purely practical. Aside from this determined group, most of the diaspora was generally unwilling to express their political views, if they held them at all.

Among the refugees were hundreds of artists whose dissenting works had put them at risk in Russia. Max and Alex’s group invited me to a gig played by an anti-war band who’d moved to Belgrade and sounded like a Slavic version of The Smiths: languid low voices; vaguely miserable, spangly guitars. The singer was tall, blonde, with angular cheekbones. Through heavy lids he gazed over the assembled crowd of young Russians with coloured-hair and face piercings, head banging solemnly. The guitar and drums thrummed louder and soon the solemnity broke: 50 boys started bouncing and slamming into each other in a mosh pit. Elbows flew, people took hits. Meanwhile the singer intoned in a low bass, ‘The snow will melt, everything will be fine,’ piercing the crowd with ice blue eyes. I assumed the song was vaguely political, a summary of diaspora disaffection, until he delivered the final line: ‘Don’t worry, you will find your drugs again.’

Alex explained the line referred to the Russian phenomenon of ‘questing’ to find drugs. Punishment for buying or selling drugs in Russia is extremely harsh, so dealers bury baggies in forests and send location pins. Buyers then dig for hours, sometimes in vain. When the snow melts, baggies are found strewn across the forest, and the hedonists come out to play.

Finding drugs was easier in Serbia. Soon Russian nightlife, bars and DJ nights were thriving in Belgrade, adding another layer to a city already known for its wild parties. Belgrade locals began to grumble about the imposition of mini-Moscow on their city: exclusive, expensive new spaces where indoor smoking was banned; the slick aesthetics and thrumming drum and bass cut a contrast to Serbia’s legendary smoke-filled kafana pubs, which play lively Balkan music to a vibrant, raucous crowd.

At one newly-opened Russian bar, serving sweet vodka concoctions, I watched two Serbian guys wander in out of curiosity. Wearing plain black T-shirts with close-cropped hairstyles, they stood out against the Muscovite boys sporting loose shirts, long locks and wandering clouds of vape smog. One of them, Milan, tried a few colourful shots, made faces, then opted for beers and sat in the corner, mulling the eclectic decor.

‘I’ve got mixed feelings about this,’ he said. ‘Here we’re surrounded by rich Russians and I sense a class divide.’ He admitted his disappointment upon realising the Russians and Serbs were not as similar as he’d been taught to believe. ‘I’ve never met people more different from us. They’re closed, cold, shy; we’re warm and open. Serbs are more like the Greeks.’

Some of the diaspora tried to embrace local life. My Serbian language classes were full of Russians. I met Tanya from Yekaterinburg, who used to work for the Russian branch of a big UK accounting firm, but got sick of the corruption and left with her husband and three kids. She now dreamed of making magic realism films (‘I need to escape all this pain through art’). I also met Anatoly who used to work in a tennis factory, threading rackets. Pale, droopy-eyed, he spent hours trying to fit his rounded vowels into Serbia’s more staccato Slavic tongue. He was job-hunting with little success. He ran out of money and sofa-surfed with friends. Eventually his pride got the better of him and he returned home. ‘I just hope I’m not drafted,’ he said. I haven’t heard from him since.

At times I felt uneasy about moving within Belgrade’s Russian set. Trips to London, where I met journalists and Ukrainian friends, reminded me of the wider picture. Then, a friend covering the war was killed near Bakhmut. The news was devastating. Yet I found myself surrounded by young Russians who didn’t trust any news, including the raw images my friend had documented. They believed everything was manipulated in some way, and were prone to conspiracy theories circulated on Telegram channels they believed authentic. (Some unironically thought that the CIA or the Brits were behind the whole thing.) I chalked this up to a life of low news trust and mental sieving through propaganda. Yet, as time went on, exposure to the outside world slowly changed the Russians’ views.

The next time the diaspora gathered en masse was in autumn, at Belgrade Pride, September 2023. A thousand came out to join the LGBT march which passed through silent streets. Most Belgraders had vacated the centre for the day, seeing the march as a ‘Western imposition’. For many, including Max and Alex, it was their first ever Pride, and they came out of curiosity to see an event that could never take place in their country as they knew it.

They were struck by the hundreds of police protecting the marchers. (The previous year had seen clashes with Serbian Orthodox church fanatics and hooligans). ‘In Russia, police at a protest means you will get beaten up,’ said Max. ‘It took me a while to realise that the police are here to protect us.’

After this, things went quiet again. But the gathering had planted a seed.

Despite the occasional mismatch between locals and Russians, most refugees were grateful that Serbia welcomed them without visas. ‘They’ve given us a place to live,’ Max said. ‘I can transfer money from home. At least I feel human here.’ He was used to Moscow’s fast pace. Now, he was embracing the relaxed Balkan lifestyle, termed ‘polako’ [Serbian for ‘slow’] by Russians. Serbs found this use of their word amusing: ‘What do they mean by polako life?’ said a Belgrade local, Jovana, over our three-hour coffee.

Jovana had once dreamed of living in Moscow and finding a Russian boyfriend. Lately, she was unsure. Not only because of the war, but the thousands of Russian men around her, many of them IT guys, had challenged her tastes. (Yandex, Russia’s answer to Google, has around 3,000 employees in Belgrade alone). Those I’d met were shy, quirky and dressed in a sort of dapper-nerd-chic Western style, though tended to be conservative by western metrics, with a strong focus on family life. Alex and Max’s group of male friends sweetly divulged their deepest feelings and were obsessed with the arts. Some spent long hours playing tabletop games. Few have dated Serbian women, who tend to prefer rugged men. Machismo culture still dominates the Balkans.

One sunny afternoon in Belgrade, Alex joked about exporting his single friends. ‘Which country needs our shy, deep boys?’ he asked, bug-eyed. ‘Maybe London? Can you help me start trafficking single Russian IT guys to the UK market?’

One of Alex’s friends came back from an Edinburgh trip clutching cans of Irn-Bru: the orange Scottish fizz was once Moscow’s third most popular drink until the manufacturer pulled out of its Russian market last year in support of Ukraine. ‘Ayrin Bryu’ in Russia tastes like discontinued Soviet-era soft drinks that make excellent mixers with vodka. From then on, any Russian visiting the UK was roped into stashing 12-packs of Bru in their hold luggage to distribute among nostalgic friends.

However, aside from the odd London trip, many in the diaspora slipped into a victim mindset about restrictions, or gave up on living abroad. ‘Forget the West, they don’t want us, it’s too expensive,’ said a couple who moved back to Moscow in January 2024 where they found low taxes and maternity subsidies suited them better than ‘your luxury of so-called freedom of speech’. Kremlin propaganda began to work on people who’d tried to escape it: the couple also worried about ‘all this trans children stuff in the West’.

Max and Alex didn’t judge returnee friends at first. Though they refused to return to Russia, they too felt confined in the Balkans and angry when other countries blocked them. ‘It’s not fair. We also hate Putin,’ said Alex. He recited an old Soviet poem about the worldwide fear of Russian passports. ‘Why is everyone so scared of us?’

History caught up with the diaspora in other ways. Events in the post-war Balkans began to shape their views. Since May 2023, thousands of Serbian liberals have been protesting against their government after mass shootings in Belgrade. In December this reached a peak. President Aleksandar Vučić called a snap election, but the voting process was so patently corrupt that Belgraders took to the streets en masse. Main roads were blocked for weeks. Russians went to witness the protests and asked locals about their demands. ‘No corruption, proper democracy, fair legal institutions, free media and no violence,’ came the response.

The protests had little immediate impact, but it drew EU attention and a re-election was announced for June. Alex was impressed by the protestors. ‘We should have done something like this in 2012 while we still had the chance,’ he said, referring to the rigged election which brought Putin back after Dmitry Medvedev. ‘We did too little too late.’

On February 16, the anti-Putin dissident Alexei Navalny died, and soon after, a memorial was set up in front of Belgrade’s Russian embassy. Alex was nervous about going because of CCTV cameras. But when he saw hundreds of people lighting candles and laying flowers, he stopped caring. He left with a haunted look. ‘I need to do something,’ he said. ‘I can’t stand and watch anymore.’ Suddenly, the friends who had returned to Russia made him angry. ‘How can they ignore this shit happening right in front of them?’

A few weeks later, he and his friends attended the protest against Putin’s latest election, called by Yulia Navalnaya, wife of the dead dissiden. They joined a mile-long queue around the polling station and carried peace slogans.

Everyone that day knew their votes would count for nothing, that the effort was futile. ‘We are little voices,’ said one woman called Tanya, carrying her toddler. But she needed to feel connected, visible, no longer alone. ‘We want to show that not all Russians are brainwashed,’ said a girl wearing a Navalny T-shirt.

As Putin inevitably clamped down the iron fist for another term, I wondered about the diaspora’s future. Had I seen the green shoots of a joined-up opposition? Could it have any impact in Russia? What lay ahead for Max, Alex, and others I’d met?

When I next saw the boys, I found them trying to treat the depressing news coming out of Russia with black humour. Alex pointed out a story: a ‘cannibal and dismembering maniac’ had been released from jail to join the front line. After fighting, they’d walk free in society. ‘Such a progressive country,’ said Alex. ‘My friends now get to live among cannibals as well as plain killers.’

Max and he were debating whether to stay in Serbia. They loved the diaspora community in Belgrade and the affordable lifestyle. Max was searching for jobs in Western companies. As an IT whizz who could hack or code anything, he was in with a chance, but he fretted about high Western living costs. Alex wanted to visit the UK for the first time, and had just secured a £400 tourist visa. ‘I’ve heard London’s really expensive and your phone will get stolen,’ he said, ‘but if I can see Fred Again, it’ll be worth it’.