Secretive flights raise new doubts over Serbian-Russian humanitarian centre

Serbia’s opposition and civil society have renewed questions over the activities of the Serbian-Russian Humanitarian Centre in Niš, as residents and critics raise concerns about repeated landings of Russian aircraft near the city that do not appear on public flight-tracking systems.

“What are people supposed to think when they are woken up in the middle of the night by the deafening noise of Antonov aircraft over Niš, while the flight officially does not exist on Flightradar24?” Serbian sociologist and journalist Olivera Sašek Radulović said, referring to the global flight-tracking network.

Her remarks come as opposition parties in the Serbian parliament challenge the legal basis of the secretive Serbian-Russian Humanitarian Centre, located around 100 kilometres from Bulgaria, a member of NATO.

On 25 December, parliamentary groups from the Free Citizens’ Movement, the Party of Democratic Action of Sandžak, the Party of Democratic Action and the Green-Left Front submitted a draft law seeking to annul the intergovernmental agreement establishing the centre. According to the sponsors, “citizens and institutions in Serbia have the right to know what is being done in this centre, who finances it, and how it affects Serbia’s position in the international community”.

“Instead of transparency, Niš has remained silent for many years,” Radulović told the daily Danas, adding that the public is routinely deprived of information about why Russia’s largest aircraft land at the local airport and what cargo they carry.

She called for an open public debate on the centre’s activities over the past 13 years, including its role in floods, fires and other emergencies. “There are objective data that could show how much assistance was actually provided,” she said, arguing that this should determine whether Serbia needs such a facility, particularly given the unclear level of public funding.

Radulović also stressed the need to assess how the centre affects Serbia’s foreign policy, “above all its relations with the European Union”. Conclusions, she said, should be based on facts rather than “the stereotype that Russians are ‘our brothers’”.

Western concerns and calls for transparency

Officially described as a humanitarian facility, the Serbian-Russian Humanitarian Centre is located in Niš, around 170 kilometres from Bulgaria’s capital Sofia. More than a decade after its creation, its precise mandate remains unclear, writes Bulgarian news agency BGNES.

The centre was established following a 2009 agreement on disaster-response cooperation between Serbia and Russia and formally opened on 25 April 2012 under a bilateral government agreement. It was signed by Serbia’s interior minister and Russia’s then minister for emergency situations, Sergei Shoigu, now Russia’s defence minister and a close ally of President Vladimir Putin.

Under its statute, the centre is registered under Serbian law as an intergovernmental humanitarian non-governmental organisation intended to assist Balkan countries in emergency situations. It is managed by a Serbian and a Russian director appointed on a rotating basis.

Due to its secrecy and location near Niš airport, the centre has repeatedly drawn criticism from Western officials. In early 2017, then US deputy assistant secretary of state Hoyt Brian Yee told Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić that Washington was “concerned about what the Serbian-Russian Humanitarian Centre in Niš could become”.

Around the same time, then US ambassador to Belgrade Kyle Scott warned that “there are enough reasons for concern”, adding that he did not know precisely what activities were being carried out at the site.

After warnings from the EU that the centre’s status could complicate Serbia’s accession negotiations, Vučić stated on 17 June 2017 that Serbia would “decide independently” whether to grant diplomatic status to Russian personnel working there, a long-standing demand from Moscow.

On 15 November 2017, then commander of US Army Europe General Ben Hodges said he did not believe the centre was genuinely humanitarian. “That is the facade, but not its true purpose,” he said, calling for greater transparency and expressing a willingness to visit the site.

The center’s proximity to Niš airport has also raised questions about possible joint Russian-Serbian military exercises in the area, as well as the use of the military airbase at Batajnica near Belgrade.

Regional impact

The centre was opened in April 2012, during Shoigu’s tenure as Russia’s minister for emergency situations, a militarised ministry he had led for more than two decades before becoming defence minister.

At a meeting in May 2021 with Serbia’s interior minister Aleksandar Vulin, Yevgeny Zinichev, a former deputy director of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), described the Niš facility as the largest and only centre of its kind in the Balkans. Russia’s ambassador to Serbia, Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko, has called it one of the most important projects between the two “brotherly nations”.

The centre is located at Serbia’s second-largest international airport, Constantine the Great Airport in Niš. In the event of a crisis, critics argue it could function as a base capable of monitoring or influencing a radius of at least 300 kilometres, covering not only Serbia but also Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Romania and nearly half of Bulgaria.

The Kremlin has repeatedly pressed Belgrade to grant special diplomatic status to Russian staff working at the centre, including immunity, privileges and living conditions comparable to those of a diplomatic mission.

Access for diplomatic representatives accredited in Serbia remains highly restricted, further fuelling speculation about the centre’s activities. While no public evidence has emerged of intelligence-gathering or surveillance operations, critics argue that close security cooperation between Serbia and Russia would make such activities unnecessary. They contend that the centre’s strategic value lies primarily in its potential to be rapidly expanded into a military facility behind NATO lines.

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Serbia has refused to impose sanctions on Moscow or to stop regular flights between Belgrade and Moscow.

Caption: Russian-Serbian Humanitarian Center in Niš, Facebook/Russian-Serbian Humanitarian Center