Ukrainian billionaire Vadim Novinsky (63) has been granted Serbian citizenship. The decision was published in Serbia's Official Gazette. Kyiv wants him on suspicion of collaborating with Russia and of high treason, but the arrest warrant clearly doesn't bother him much - Novinsky mostly moves around freely.

He was born in 1963 in Russia, is ethnically Russian, and has held Ukrainian citizenship since 2012. He made his fortune, estimated at 1.2 to 1.4 billion dollars, in Ukraine. In 2019 he entered the Ukrainian parliament as an MP for the pro-Russian Opposition Platform - For Life, a party banned after the invasion began. He was also a prominent member of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which Kyiv believes maintains ties with the Russian Orthodox Church and acts in Moscow's interest.

After Russia's 2022 invasion, Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council imposed sanctions on his company Balaklavskoye RU, which mines limestone and gypsum. In January 2023 the State Bureau of Investigation opened an investigation into subversive activity, terrorism and high treason. That same year the state seized his assets worth more than 10 billion hryvnias, about 228 million dollars.

Serbia isn't his first address in the region. In April it emerged that he had bought a property in Samobor, near Zagreb, for 10 million euros, and registered his residence there. Since his plans in Croatia evidently didn't work out, he applied for citizenship in Serbia, where this is becoming standard practice for certain wealthy fugitives.

The list is longer. Before Novinsky, Andriy Naumov arrived in Serbia - a former senior official of Ukraine's intelligence service who left Ukraine right before the invasion. In Serbia he was arrested with a large sum of cash and jewelry and sentenced to a year in prison for money laundering - but after serving his sentence he wasn't extradited to Ukraine, he was allowed to leave the country.

South Korea's "crypto king" Do Kwon also hid in Belgrade, in an upscale neighborhood, planning to set up a company. He was arrested at the airport in Podgorica, extradited to the US and sentenced to 15 years in prison for fraud.

Belgrade is officially on the road to the EU, and at the same time it hands passports to people wanted by Ukraine - a country that same EU is fighting for. How many more decisions like this will slip quietly through the Official Gazette before someone in Brussels asks why?