50,000 Russians „are waiting“ for Serbia to integrate them

Director of the Center for Protection and Assistance to Asylum Seekers, Rados Djurovic, has said that since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, more than 300,000 Russian citizens have passed through Serbia, and that about 50,000 have remained there, with the assessment that the state should work on their integration into society, since they are primarily highly educated people.

Djurovic told Beta news agency that they were coming to Serbia and using a visa-free regime that allowed them to stay in the country for 30 days, which could be seen as a tourist stay, but it did not correspond to the character of their stay, which was longer and which was caused by all the events related to the war in Ukraine.

„When we talk about Russian citizens, if they do not have a marriage with Serbian citizens, if they do not have real estate here, if they do not have employment registered here, they have to regulate that they are basically leaving Serbia and returning every 30 days, with the hope that at the entrance they will be allowed to pass by the border control, allowing them to return to the country again,“ Djurovic said.

He added that a very small number of people from Russia were actually seeking asylum in Serbia and even entered the procedure at all, and that these were almost insignificant numbers of several dozens of them, which, according to Djurovic, was not relevant from the aspect of statistics.

He stated that this had other legal consequences, such as that many of them did not report jobs they performed in Serbia, i.e. they worked illegally.

„It could be said, according to our estimates, that somewhere around 20 percent of everyone has a regulated stay on the basis of work, marital relations with a Serbian citizen, on the basis of possession of real estate, or otherwise, and that the rest of them are trying to extend their stay in these ways, by going out and entering the country in some continuous period,“ Djurovic said.

According to him, many of them come to Serbia because of the difficult situation in Russia, because of problems with political  affiliations, because they do not want to participate in war activities, but sanctions are the main motivating factor for these people to leave their country because they are not able to do their jobs and earn as before.

Izvor: Beta

Foto: Pixabay, Unsplash