Russians and Ukrainians open companies, buy real estate or temporarily settle in Serbia, fleeing war and sanctions
They did not learn Serbian at school, so new business ideas, Serbian language classes for Russians and Ukrainians, are increasingly being materialized in small advertisements.
“Interest has increased since the conflict in Ukraine began. They are mostly looking for the most basic form of communication and quickly mastering it. Serbian classes for Russians and Ukrainians.
According to him, the biggest problem for understanding Serbs and Russians is a lot of similar words that have absolutely opposite meanings (for example, the famous question “How is your family?”) And the even more famous “Serbian” answer, “Okay, thanks for asking “).
“That’s because we think we understand them well, based on what we learned in school, but these are the basics that have been largely forgotten, so the conversation seems quite funny,” explains Svetlana. received advice on life in Serbia:
“These are people who came to work and who can work from home. The courses are mostly held online, and we have a lot of students who started learning Serbian in Russia.”
Svetlana also states that for business contacts, for the purchase of real estate or arranging documents, the Russians hire translators who go with them to institutions, to lawyers or to inspect apartments.
A Russian language teacher at a Belgrade high school recently posted an ad offering Serbian language classes for Russian citizens.
“There are no people interested yet, but I expect them to start appearing,” says the professor, who is also the author of several textbooks and who has taught Russians in Belgrade before.
Recently, foreign language schools have been looking for foreign language schools, which did not have this language on offer before, and one of them is the Belgrade Center for Foreign Languages Moment School, which advertised a job for a Russian teacher under the label “urgent”.
The ad was also published by the RSC Freelancer consulting group, a group of freelancers who are investment consultants and offer their services to companies from Russia and the Russian-speaking area and the EU. According to Goran Madenović-Jovanović from that group, one can feel the wave of arrival of Russians caused by the war situation.
“The interest of Russian citizens who want to open a company in Serbia has increased by some 20 percent. The business people we work with here mostly open companies to avoid sanctions, because now it is easier to work with the EU when the company is not Russian but Serbian.”
However, Mladenović-Jovanović states that Russian businessmen tend to speak English in Serbia in order to overcome language barriers, Kamatica writes.
