Four Russian Tycoons Receive Serbian Citizenship for Reasons Unknown

Belgrade, panorama (BETAPHOTO/MILOS MISKOV)

Four Russian Tycoons Receive Serbian Citizenship for Reasons Unknown

At least four Russian oligarchs were granted Serbian citizenship in 2025, although the criteria Milos Vucevic’s government used to pass this decision remain unclear, the latest edition of the weekly Nedeljnik has reported.

Serbia’s new citizens now include four tycoons who, in recent years, have followed the pattern of Russia’s business elite – namely transferring their assets in the wake of the global sanctions on Russia.

The individuals in question are Oleg Boyko, whose personal wealth is estimated to USD1.5 billion, Sergei Lomakin, ‘worth’ USD1.2 billion, as well as Evgeni Stershalkovski and Yuri Kushnerov, whose net assets have not been made public but are suspected to exceed several hundred million U.S. dollars.

The Nedeljnik claims it uncovered this information by combing through Cabinet decisions, published, according to protocol, in the government’s Official Gazette. Each of the four new citizenships, the paper said, was signed off on by outgoing prime minister Milos Vucevic.

The weekly recalled that Serbia has a history of giving citizenship to powerful foreign nationals, including former Thailand prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra, who became a Serbian citizen in 2019 while Thailand had an active warrant for her arrest, Romania’s former prime minister Victor Ponta, accused of corruption in Romania in 2018, as well as former members of Palestine’s Fatah Mohammad Dahlan, Samir al-Mashharawy and Sufian Abu Zaida.

“Just like in these prior cases, it remains unclear what interest the Serbian state has in granting citizenship to Russian oligarchs, just as it is unclear whether they have any business interests in Serbia. When one looks at their biographies, it becomes apparent that they have never done business in Serbia, nor are there records of them ever even visiting the country,” the paper concluded.