Russia–Serbia relations

• 1. Introduction

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  Russia-Serbia relations stretch back to 1816, when the Russian Empire and the Principality of Serbia first formalized ties between two peoples who had already been bound together for centuries by faith, blood, and survival. Long before that date, Serbian refugees were finding shelter in Russia after the Ottoman invasion of Serbia in the 14th century. Lazar the Serb and Pachomius the Serb were among the notable figures who made their mark in Russian medieval history. Elena Glinskaya, the mother of Tsar Ivan the Terrible, was of Serbian descent on her mother’s side. What explains such deep and enduring entanglement? Why did Serbia sign a military alliance with Russia in 1807, and why did a cavalry force staffed by Russian exiles ride out of Yugoslav territory in 1924 to topple an Albanian government? How did a wartime friendship turn into a near-military confrontation just three years after victory, and why does Serbia today stand as the only European country besides Belarus still maintaining a visa-free arrangement with Russia?

• 2. Faith, Refugees, and Alliance

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  The Orthodox worship of Saint Sava was established in Russia during the 16th century, planting a religious bond that would outlast empires. In the 1750s, Austrian Colonel Ivan Horvat organized the resettlement of large numbers of Orthodox Serbs, most of them Habsburg-governed Serbian Grenzers, into Russia’s military frontier zones. These settlers established New Serbia, centered at Novomyrhorod, and Slavo-Serbia, now within the contested Luhansk Oblast. Both territories were incorporated into Russia’s Novorossiya Governorate in 1764.

  When the Ottoman Empire allied itself with Napoleon in 1806 and came under attack from Russia and Britain, it briefly became receptive to Serbian rebel demands. Russian adviser Konstantin Rodofinikin proposed that Serbia become a Russian protectorate, with garrisons and a high representative stationed there. The rebel leader Karađorđe refused outright, saying the arrangement would simply convert Serbia into a Russian province. Still, he accepted Russian arms, military missions, and medical assistance under a looser alliance signed in 1807.

  The Russo-Turkish settlement of 1812 undid much of that arrangement. Its terms effectively permitted Turkish forces to re-enter Serbia, and the First Serbian Uprising was crushed by 1813. The Second Uprising eventually secured Serbian autonomy within the Ottoman Empire, a status internationally confirmed through the Akkerman Convention and the Treaty of Adrianople. Serbia was placed under Russian protection, though Russia could not exercise the same direct control it held over Wallachia and Moldavia. That protection was formally abolished in 1856 following Russia’s defeat in the Crimean War. In 1838, Prince Miloš Obrenović received the first Russian consul, Gerasim Vashchenko, signaling that a formal bilateral relationship was taking shape.

• 3. Rivalries, Coups, and the Road to War

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  Serbia’s declaration of independence alongside Montenegro in 1876 set off a war with the Ottoman Empire that ended with Serbian victory in 1878, but the diplomatic settlement at the Congress of Berlin left Serbian leaders bitter. Austria-Hungary’s foreign minister Gyula Andrássy shaped the deliberations heavily, and many in Serbia believed Russia had sacrificed Serbian interests to favor the newly formed Principality of Bulgaria. Austria-Hungary moved quickly to fill the resulting vacuum, concluding a secret convention with Milan Obrenović in June 1881 that made Serbia effectively a client state.

  The tide began to turn after Nikola Pašić’s People’s Radical Party won a parliamentary majority in 1891, pushing to reduce Austro-Hungarian influence. The assassination of King Alexander I in a 1903 coup ended the Obrenović dynasty and brought the House of Karađorđević back to power. Prime Minister Pašić under Peter I pivoted Serbia decisively toward Russia, and Russia backed Serbia in its grinding economic Pig War with Austria-Hungary.

  By 1897, Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph and Tsar Nicholas II had reached a secret agreement to preserve the Balkan status quo, a compact designed to prevent the emergence of a large Slavic state. That understanding did not prevent escalation. In May 1914, Serbia’s internal politics were split between Pašić’s government and Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijević, known by his codename Apis, head of Military Intelligence. When Dimitrijević’s intrigues led Peter I to dismiss Pašić, the Russian Minister in Belgrade personally intervened to have the government restored. Russia judged Pašić worth preserving because Serbia, exhausted from the Balkan Wars and near-bankrupt, needed stability. The Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand ended any such calculation, and Russia mobilized in late July ostensibly to defend Serbia and to signal that it remained a great power in the region. Germany declared war on Russia, transforming a local crisis into a global conflict.

• 4. White Russians and Royal Yugoslavia

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  After the Bolshevik victory in the Russian Civil War in 1922, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia found itself in an unusual position: officially hostile to the new Soviet government but deeply hospitable to those the Soviets had defeated. The government framed its generosity as repayment of a debt, since Russia had mobilized on Serbia’s behalf at the outbreak of World War I. Some 40,000 Russians loyal to the late Russian Empire settled in the kingdom.

  At Serbian Patriarch Dimitrije’s invitation in 1921, the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church in exile relocated from Constantinople to Serbia. A year later, in Sremski Karlovci, it established what became the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia. Metropolitan Anthony Khrapovitsky served as the spiritual figurehead of the Russian diaspora until his death in 1936. Serbian Patriarch Varnava became a persistent advocate for these exiles at the Royal Court, pressing the government against any normalization with Moscow.

  General Pyotr Wrangel’s soldiers were partly enrolled into Yugoslavia’s Border Guard. After a 1922 law disbanded the Border Guard, these men worked a road-building contract between Kraljevo and Raška in 1923-1924. Wrangel himself founded the Russian All-Military Union in 1924, which was headquartered in Sremski Karlovci until 1927. By 1934, its membership in Yugoslavia alone stood at 25,000, and its Department IV operated in constant liaison with Yugoslavia’s Ministry of the Army and Navy.

  In 1924, a cavalry brigade composed entirely of Wrangel’s veterans was formed under former Imperial General Sergei Ulagay for a covert operation: the mission was to topple Albania’s pro-Soviet Orthodox leader Fan Noli, who had seized power in June, and reinstall Muslim Ahmet Zogu. The operation was carried out in December that year. Soviet intelligence, meanwhile, was working to counter the émigré network. In 1938, Soviet intelligence officer Pyotr Zubov arrived with ,000 in cash for a planned coup meant to remove the Stojadinović government. After judging the designated Serbian officers unfit for the task, Zubov refused to pay and the plot collapsed.

• 5. Tito’s Break with Moscow

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  On the 5th of April 1941, just one day before Germany’s invasion, the new Yugoslav government signed a Treaty of Friendship and Non-Aggression with the Soviet Union. The agreement carried no mutual defense commitments, and within weeks Yugoslavia had fallen. Soviet General Pavel Sudoplatov later wrote that the Soviet leadership was shocked by how promptly and effectively Hitler responded to the March coup. Once Germany attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941, Moscow began supporting Yugoslav Partisans under Tito. From autumn 1944, regular Red Army units fought alongside Partisans in Serbian territory, most notably in the Belgrade Offensive.

  After the war ended in 1945, Tito’s Communist-dominated government deposed King Peter II. Initial relations with Moscow were close, and Stalin expected Yugoslavia to join the Soviet bloc. But Yugoslavia’s territorial ambitions over the Free Territory of Trieste, Carinthia, and the wider Balkans, combined with Tito’s support for Greek Communists that Stalin preferred not to back, generated friction. By early 1948, the break was approaching.

  On the 28th of June 1948, a Cominform resolution condemned Yugoslavia’s Communist Party leadership for departing from Marxism-Leninism and declared that the Party had placed itself outside the international Communist movement. Moscow expected Tito to collapse once it was known he had lost Soviet backing. Instead, Tito held power, and the following year Hungary and the Soviet Union massed forces on Yugoslavia’s northern frontier. Stalin attempted to have Tito assassinated on several occasions, all unsuccessfully. The crisis eventually subsided after Stalin’s death, and the Belgrade Declaration of 1955 formally rescinded his policies toward Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia went on to become a founding member of the Non-Aligned Movement, while Soviet aircraft were permitted to fly over Yugoslav territory to supply Egypt between the Six-Day War and the Yom Kippur War.

• 6. Kosovo, Ukraine, and Modern Tensions

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  The 2013 Strategic Partnership Declaration formalized Serbia’s relationship with Russia across roughly seventy bilateral treaties covering trade, energy, military, and cultural cooperation. Russian presidents visited Belgrade in 2000, 2011, 2014, and 2019; Serbian presidents made multiple visits to Moscow across those same years. But the relationship grew more complicated as Ukraine moved to the center of European politics.

  When NATO bombed Yugoslavia in 1999 over Kosovo, Russian president Boris Yeltsin called it open aggression against a sovereign country. Russia condemned the strikes at the United Nations. Volunteers from Russia traveled to Kosovo in large numbers to resist NATO operations. Borislav Milošević, brother of Slobodan Milošević and Yugoslav ambassador to Moscow at the time, proposed that Yugoslavia join the Union State of Belarus and Russia.

  When Kosovo declared independence in 2008, Russian president Dmitry Medvedev described its EU recognition as analogous to what Iraq had been for the United States. Ambassador Aleksandr Konuzin told a Belgrade daily newspaper in 2009 that Russia was prepared to back whatever position Serbia took on Kosovo. In 2014, Russia cited Kosovo’s precedent to justify recognizing Crimea’s independence, then annexed the peninsula a week later. Russia’s later recognition of Donetsk and Luhansk was framed under the same justification.

  After Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Serbia voted in the UN General Assembly to condemn the invasion and later voted to expel Russia from the UN Human Rights Council, while declining to impose sanctions. President Aleksandar Vučić stated in 2023, “For us, Crimea is Ukraine, Donbas is Ukraine, and it’ll remain so.” He also told the Financial Times that Serbian-produced arms might be reaching Ukraine, saying: “I am aware that some of the arms might end up in Ukraine.” At a 2024 multilateral summit, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy thanked Vučić for Serbian humanitarian support. Despite the official position, Serbian public sentiment polled above 70% in favor of Russia over Ukraine, and pro-Russia rallies in Belgrade drew larger crowds than pro-Ukraine ones.

• 7. Energy, Culture, and Two Waves of Russians

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  Trade between Russia and Serbia reached almost $3 billion in 2023. Russia’s exports amounted to roughly $1.7 billion, more than two-thirds of it natural gas delivered via the TurkStream pipeline, which supplies some 90% of Serbia’s annual natural gas consumption. The Serbian national oil company Naftna Industrija Srbije is majority-owned by Gazprom Neft, a subsidiary of state-owned Gazprom. Its refinery in Pančevo has a capacity of 4.8 million tonnes and ranks among the most modern in Europe; the company also runs 334 filling stations representing 74% of the domestic retail market. Gazprom is the majority owner of the petrochemical complex HIP-Petrohemija, also located in Pančevo.

  Cultural ties run as deep. The Russian House in Belgrade, established in 1933, had over 5,000 students enrolled in its Russian language programs as of 2023. Russia funded the mosaic cladding of the Church of Saint Sava in Belgrade, a project carried out between 2017 and 2020 by artists Nikolay Mukhin and Yevgeniy Maksimov, drawing on graduates of the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture and the Repin Institute of Arts in Saint Petersburg. The Bolshoi Ballet performs in Serbia; Serbian folk ensembles travel to Russian festivals. The 2019 Serbian-Russian co-production The Balkan Line, about the 1999 Kosovo conflict, topped box office charts in both countries.

  Something quieter has reshaped the human geography of the relationship. The 2022 Census recorded 10,486 Russians in Serbia, but since the invasion of Ukraine that year, more than 300,000 Russian nationals entered the country, with some 53,000 issued residence permits. This mirrored the earlier wave: after the October Revolution and Civil War, roughly 40,000 Russians settled in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia by the end of the 1920s, over two-thirds of them in the territory of present-day Serbia. Many were former aristocrats, military officers, and intellectuals fleeing the Bolsheviks. In both cases, Serbia’s visa-free relationship with Russia, which the two countries formalized in 2009, made the country a natural landing point. Within the current wave, tensions have emerged between pro-Putin Serbians and anti-war Russian arrivals, and Serbian authorities have labeled some anti-war Russians a potential national security risk subject to deportation.