BBC“Our people respect the Russian and Ukrainian people,” says Savvo Dobrovic. “I simply haven’t noticed any bad relations.”
It feels like a recipe for stress and confrontation: tens of hundreds of individuals from opposing sides in a bitter, protracted battle descending on a small Balkan nation with its personal very latest recollections of battle.
However Montenegro has managed the inflow up to now.
Since February 2022, Ukrainian refugees and Russian exiles have fanned out throughout Europe, fleeing battle, conscription and Vladimir Putin’s rule.
Greater than 4 million individuals have fled Ukraine for momentary safety within the European Union – to Germany and Poland and elsewhere.
However past the EU, Montenegro has let in in additional than 200,000 Ukrainians, making it the best per capita Ukrainian refugee inhabitants on the planet.
“Montenegrins are very patient, they are people who want to help,” says Dobrovic, a property proprietor within the Adriatic resort of Budva.
The phrase polako, which means “slowly”, is integral to their lifestyle.
“It amazes me – they’re a mountain people, but all that’s left from that noisy temperament is a desire to hug you,” says Natalya Sevets-Yermolina, who runs the Russian cultural centre Reforum in Budva.
Montenegro, a Nato member and candidate for EU standing, has not been with out its issues.
It has a considerable ethnic Serb inhabitants, a lot of whom have pro-Russian sympathies, and 6 Russian diplomats have been expelled two years in the past on suspicion of spying.
Nevertheless it has gained reward for its response to the refugee disaster – specifically its choice to grant Ukrainians momentary safety standing, which has now been prolonged till March 2025.
The latest figures from September final yr present greater than 10,000 had benefited, and the UN says 62,000 Ukrainians had registered some authorized standing by then. That’s almost 10% of Montenegro’s inhabitants.
Hundreds extra have come from Russia or Belarus.
For all of those teams Montenegro is enticing for its visa-free regime, comparable language, widespread faith and Western-leaning authorities.
That welcome doesn’t at all times lengthen to their high quality of life.
Whereas there are many jobs for immigrants in coastal areas, they’re usually seasonal and poorly paid. Higher high quality, skilled work is more durable to seek out. The luckier ones have been in a position to retain the roles they’d again dwelling, working remotely.
One other problem is that it’s nearly unattainable to get citizenship right here, an issue for many who, for no matter motive, are unable to resume their passports.
There was a powerful Russian presence in Montenegro for years, and it has a fame, maybe unfairly, as a playground for the very wealthy.
Many Russians and Ukrainians have property or household connections, however there may be additionally a big contingent who ended up right here nearly by likelihood, feeling utterly misplaced.
It was for them that non-profit shelter Pristaniste (Haven) was arrange.
Primarily based in Budva, it offers probably the most determined arrivals a secure place and a heat welcome for 2 weeks as they discover their toes.
They’re given assist with documentation, trying to find jobs and flats, and Ukrainians may also come for 2 weeks as a “holiday” from the battle.
Valentina Ostroglyad, 60, got here right here along with her daughter a yr in the past from Zaporizhzhia, a regional capital in south-eastern Ukraine that comes underneath repeated, lethal Russian bombardment.
“When I first arrived in Montenegro I couldn’t handle fireworks, or even a roof falling in – I associated it with those explosions,” she stated.
Now she is working as an artwork trainer and having fun with her adopted nation: “Today I went up to a spring, admired the mountains and sea. And people are very kind.”
The continuing grimness of the battle ensures that Ukrainians maintain coming, not in a position to endure the ache and struggling at dwelling.
Sasha Borkov, a driver from Kharkiv, was separated from his spouse and 6 kids, aged 4 to 16, as they left Ukraine in late August.
He was turned again on the Polish border – he beforehand did jail time in Hungary for transporting irregular migrants and is banned from the EU. His household have been allowed to proceed to Germany whereas he, after a tense few days travelling round Europe, was lastly allowed to the touch down in Montenegro.
Visibly confused and exhausted, he described how the battle had lastly pushed him and his household from their dwelling.
“When you see and hear every day houses being destroyed, people being killed, it’s impossible to convey,” he stated.
“Our flat isn’t damaged but windows get broken, and [the bombs] are getting closer and closer.”
Borkov stated he had been taking a look at the potential of going to Montenegro because the begin of the battle: “[Pristaniste] took me in, gave me food and drink, a place to stay. I rested, then I started looking for work.”
He has already discovered a job and his household are because of be a part of him right here. He’s making use of for momentary safety, and a spot at a Ukrainian refugee centre.
Elsewhere in Budva, Yuliya Matsuy has arrange a kids’s centre for Ukrainians to take classes in historical past, English, maths and artwork – or simply to bop, sing and watch movies.
Many have been traumatised by battle, she says: “They weren’t interested in the mountains or the sea, they wanted nothing.”
“But when they started interacting, their eyes were smiling. Those children’s smiles and emotions were something that’s impossible to convey. And only then we understood we were doing the right thing.”
Now most are settled. The younger children learned Montenegrin and now attend local schools, while the older ones have continued their learning remotely at Ukrainian schools.
Both charities have Russian volunteers, which has helped foster good relations between the Russian and Ukrainian communities here.
Ruslan Sukhushin/FacebookOther parts of Europe have seen occasional friction. At the start of the war, Germany recorded a rise in attacks on Ukrainians and Russians.
But there has been little of that so far in Montenegro.
There is a sense of tolerance here and Pristaniste and its volunteers have had a role in promoting it.
Sasha Borkov distinguishes between Russians he has met in Budva and those fighting the war in Ukraine.
“People here are trying to help, they’re not doing anything against our country, against us, against my children, [unlike] those who fire at and destroy our houses, and say that they’re liberating us.”
Friendships have grown among volunteers and residents, and between residents, and one Russian-Ukrainian couple who lived at Pristaniste recently married.
Empathy is a major factor. A recent talk in Budva by Kyiv-based journalist Olha Musafirova about her work, in Ukrainian, had Russians in the audience in tears, horrified by their country’s actions.
For Ukrainian actor Katarina Sinchillo, Russian diasporas can vary and Montenegro’s is “sensitive”.
“I think the people who live here are a somewhat different community because it’s the intelligentsia,” she says, “educated people who can’t live without the arts.”
Russian-Ukrainian joint projects are vanishingly rare.
But Sinchillo set up a theatre here, with husband and fellow actor Viktor Koshel, using actors from all over the former Soviet Union.
Their plays are well attended, she says: “Progressive Russian people, who are helping Ukraine, go with interest and pleasure.”
Koshel says the environment here is perfect for such contacts. ”Right here the countryside is heavenly, it takes you away from these urbanist, gloomy, depressive moods, political propaganda and many others. You go to the ocean and all that disappears.”
They have also collaborated with veteran Russian rock musician Mikhail Borzykin, who has seen big changes in the Russian diaspora over the past three years.
Before the war, he says, “fierce arguments” about Putin in the Russian community were commonplace, but the recent influx of anti-war immigrants created a different atmosphere.
“The overwhelming majority of younger individuals who have come right here, they in fact perceive the horror of what’s occurring, so there may be settlement on the principle questions,” he says.
As for the pro-Kremlin former members of Russia’s corrupt elite, who he calls the vatnaya diaspora, they are sitting quietly in the properties they bought in Montenegro years ago.
“Conflicts usually are not aired in public,” he says.
Borzykin is part of a volleyball group of Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians and says they are “all on the identical wavelength”.
Despite the relatively warm welcome, the future of some immigrants remains uncertain.
Strict citizenship laws mean many of them will not be able to stay here indefinitely.
Most Ukrainians seem keen to return home if the war ends, assuming they still have homes to go to.
“Presently there’s an enormous menace to our lives, but when it ends in fact we’ll go dwelling,” says Sasha Borkov. “There’s nowhere higher than dwelling”.
But most Russians say it will take much more than the fall of the regime to persuade them to go back permanently.
Natalya Sevets-Yermolina, who comes from the northern city of Petrozavodsk, says she’s not in a hurry.
“I’ve the issue that it’s not Putin that persecuted me however these little individuals I lived in the identical metropolis with,” she says. “Putin is way away however those that do his bidding will stay, even when he dies quickly.”
Borzykin says he too is unlikely to return quickly, as attitudes could take decades to change.
“Germany wanted 30 years [after the Nazis] whereas the brand new technology got here alongside. I’m afraid I gained’t have that lengthy.”
Oleg Pshenichny contributed to this text
