More than 300,000 Russians have emigrated to Serbia since the start of the war in Ukraine. About one in 10 has been issued with a residence permit. On the whole, however, they haven't really integrated into Serbian society.
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00:00 Banan Alamai, the city of Novi Sad, is the first private Russian preschool in Serbia.
00:07 Demand for places is so great that the school can no longer keep up.
00:11 It was founded by Andrei Girko, a Russian citizen who left St. Petersburg 18 months
00:17 ago when Russia's mobilization drive began.
00:20 It seemed that people really needed a place where they could send their children, where
00:27 they could feel safe, where they could feel good, where they could joke in Russian, where
00:34 they could speak in Russian, where they could find friends, where they could protect themselves
00:39 from the stress that they still have, because they moved, they lost their families, their
00:44 homes, their toys, their apartments.
00:46 About 30,000 Russian citizens have been issued with residence permits in Serbia since the
00:51 start of the war in Ukraine.
00:54 The vast majority live in Belgrade and Novi Sad and work remotely for IT companies.
01:01 According to official figures, Russian citizens have so far set up 9,500 companies in Serbia.
01:07 One of these companies belongs to Dmitri Lavrov, who imports Spanish cider.
01:13 His daughter also attends the Banan Alama preschool.
01:18 We have a very large Russian community that absorbs everything.
01:27 We have Russian cafes, Russian hairdressers, Russian beauty salons, and so on.
01:35 And of course, in this regard, we are a kind of closed community inside Serbia.
01:44 According to the European Policy Centre, Serbia sees the Russian immigrants as an opportunity
01:49 to gain skilled workers.
01:51 But according to experts, these expectations are very naive.
01:56 There is a serious dose of doubt that a large number of these newly opened companies have
02:04 served the Russian state only as a barrier to solving the spatial stagnation in Serbia,
02:12 and on the other hand, some preliminary data also indicate that Russian citizens are mainly
02:22 employed in those companies that are actually operating.
02:27 The staff at Banan Alama are Russian too.
02:30 No one here speaks Serbian.
02:32 It's unlikely that they will learn the language any time soon.
02:36 After all, Serbia has a conservative integration policy, especially when it comes to language courses.
02:41 Most Serbs speak English very well, and that's why many Russians don't study Serbian very much.
02:55 Why? Because one way or another we also speak English, and we can, while staying in the community,
03:01 go out and talk to someone in English and come back again.
03:06 They wanted to turn their back on their country's policies, and have found at least a provisional future in Serbia.
03:13 But left to their own devices, Russians in Serbia are living in their own parallel society.
03:21 Thank you.
03:23 You need to start.
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