Eurasia Press & News
Since early 2022, the Serbian government has bestowed citizenship “in the interest of the republic” on more than 330 people, including 204 Russian nationals, according to a new joint investigation by iStories and the Crime and Corruption Reporting Network (KRIK). A Serbian passport grants entry into the European Union and roughly a hundred countries around the world, making it especially coveted among influential Russians who have had to navigate a web of travel restrictions since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The investigation by iStories and KRIK shows how an initiative in Belgrade — issued under Article 19 of Serbia’s citizenship law, distinct from other nations’ “golden passport” programs in exchange for large investments — has preserved indirect access to the E.U. for many of Russia’s elites, particularly those connected to the occupation of Ukraine and the intelligence sector. Meduza summarizes the journalists’ findings.
Occupation profiteers
One of Serbia’s recently naturalized Russians is Ivan Sibiryev, the former head of Stroytransneftegaz, a company owned by billionaire Gennady Timchenko. iStories previously discovered that Sibiryev became co-owner of a construction firm called R-Stroy after February 2022, when the business won lucrative reconstruction contracts in the occupied cities of Mariupol and Sievierodonetsk. The E.U. imposed sanctions on R-Stroy only last year. Sibiryev also co-owns the restaurant Wine & Crab with Svetlana Kuznetsova, the stepdaughter of Gazprom CEO Alexey Miller and the daughter of Putin’s former secretary, Marina Yentaltseva.
Serbian citizenship has also been granted to Russian national Svetlana Perevalova, whose husband, Viktor, founded the company High-Quality Automotive Roads (VAD), which has large construction contracts in Crimea. In 2020 alone, the company reported revenue exceeding 85 billion rubles (roughly $1.15 billion at the time). This firm built the road over the Kerch Strait bridge, the Tavrida highway, and the road connecting Simferopol to Crimea’s western coast, resulting in E.U. and U.S. sanctions in 2018. According to leaked tax and police records reviewed by iStories, Svetlana Perevalova worked as a manager at VAD until 2018, if not longer.
Among Russia’s new Serbian citizens, iStories and KRIK journalists also identified Kirill Krattli, the husband of Anastasia Tkacheva, State Duma deputy Alexey Tkachev’s daughter. The family (which includes Alexey Tkachev’s brother, former Krasnodar Governor and ex-Agriculture Minister Alexander Tkachev) is a major player in Russia’s new agriculture market on occupied Ukrainian territory. While the two Tkachev brothers are under E.U. sanctions, Kirill Krattli heads the Krasnodar-Saratov-based company Mirtekh, which supplies agricultural machinery. Mirtekh works with Agrokompleks, one of Russia’s largest agribusinesses, owned by the Tkachev family. (Journalists at Protokol previously established this connection.)
In December 2022, The Wall Street Journal reported extensively on the Tkachevs’ seizure of 400,000 acres of Ukrainian farmland. Krattli’s firm Mirtekh imports machinery and parts from Europe, Canada, Turkey, and South Korea and sells them to Agrokompleks and various sanctioned Russian companies, including subsidiaries of Sberbank, VTB, and Gazprom, as shown in financial documents obtained by Protokol. Journalists estimate that the 4 million tons of grain and other produce harvested in Ukraine’s occupied regions and exported abroad have generated roughly $800 million in revenue.
The investigation also found a Serbian passport issued to Dmitry Sergeyev, a longtime associate of Russian Deputy Prime Minister and former Agriculture Minister Dmitry Patrushev, the son of General Nikolai Patrushev — an ex-FSB director, former Security Council secretary, and longtime Putin adviser. Patrushev Sr. also has a longstanding relationship with Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandar Vulin. The two former intelligence bosses have coordinated “anti-color-revolution” surveillance that included spying on Russian opposition activists Andrey Pivovarov and Vladimir Kara-Murza in Belgrade. Sergeyev has worked closely with Patrushev Jr. for years. Today, he is CEO of both the United Grain Company and the Russian Grain Exporters Union — two major organizations responsible for agricultural exports from farmlands under Russian control.
Help from Russia’s secret police
Ilya Shumanov, an anti-corruption researcher and head of the NGO Arktida, believes that Serbian officials’ decision to naturalize so many Russians with ties to the Kremlin and Russia’s defense industry could be part of a political arrangement between Moscow and Belgrade. In this scenario, Serbia would be risking its shot at joining the European Union in exchange for tools from Russia to control domestic unrest (particularly amid the mass anti-government protests that have persisted since early 2024).
The explosion in connected Russians getting Serbian citizenship coincides with anti-government protests sweeping Belgrade. Last year, 86 of Serbia’s 137 new “merit-based” passports went to Russians, 30 of whom are tied directly or indirectly to the Kremlin or major Russian corporations. Throughout this process, Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandar Vulin visited Russia multiple times, meeting with the heads of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service and Federal Security Service, with Nikolai Patrushev, with then-Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, and other top officials. In March 2025, Vulin even openly credited Russia’s intelligence community with helping him suppress Serbia’s protests.
Shumanov told iStories that he suspects Russia has provided Serbia with “informal financial support, loans, and credit lines to sustain the regime,” as well as favorable contracts with Russian firms. Moscow can also offer various tools, such as online surveillance technology and bot farms, to bolster the Serbian authorities’ authoritarian response to protests.
According to Russian-Serbian political analyst Aleksandar Djokic, the Serbian government is technically required to state an official reason for recommending any foreigner for Serbian citizenship “on merit,” and the Internal Affairs Ministry is required to vet these candidates for threats to national security. Despite the government’s apparent noncompliance with these rules and the fact that this initiative opens the door to the E.U. for many well-connected Russian nationals, Djokic said only mass migration from the Balkans really worries officials in Brussels. “A scandal involving, say, an FSB agent could be a problem, but issuing passports to billionaires and oligarchs might not be — money always finds a loophole,” Djokic told journalists.
iStories said it will share response statements by the European Commission, the Serbian government, and the Russian nationals mentioned in its report if anyone in these groups answers the questions journalists mailed out before their investigation was published.
