Putin grants citizenship to a Serbian artist and a descendant of a white emigrant

The President signed a decree granting Russian citizenship to a descendant of white emigrant Dimitri Durdin-Mak and Serbian sculptor and painter Dragan Radenovic, who is an honorary foreign member of the Russian Academy of Arts.

President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on the admission to Russian citizenship of Serbian sculptor and artist Dragan Radenovic and a descendant of white-emigrant Dimitri Durdin-Mak. The corresponding document was published on March 1.

Radenovic was born in 1951 in the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (part of socialist Yugoslavia) and lives and works in Serbia. He is an honorary foreign member of the Russian Academy of Arts and a laureate of Russian and international awards since 2007. Radenovic has also been a member of the Association of Artists of Serbia since 1980 and of the French Academy of Fine Arts since 2010.

According to the academy, the sculptor has received six state and public awards and prizes in different countries, including the prize of the UNESCO Fountain Competition in Copenhagen in 1983 and the first prize of the Moscow Film Festival competition for his sculpture “St. George Slaying the Dragon” in Moscow in 1997.

His works in Russia include a monument to Nicholas II in Yekaterinburg (unveiled in 1995) and diplomat Vitaly Churkin in the Vladimir region in 2019 – Russia’s post representative to the UN died in 2017.

Durdin-Mack was born in January 1946 in Belgium. He was one of those descendants of white emigrants who signed the declaration “Solidarity with Russia” in 2014, for which he was placed on the Ukrainian website “Peacemaker”.

Russian citizenship, according to the same decree, was granted to Mark Andronikof, one of the founders of the Movement for Local Orthodoxy of the Russian Tradition in Western Europe, and Vera Faske-Dikusar, the winner of the international stream of the Leaders of Russia contest.

Faske-Dikusar was born in Kazakhstan in 1981. The media technologist became a participant of the international stream of the “Woman Leader” program of the “Senezh” management workshop of the presidential platform “Russia – the Country of Opportunities”.

Andronikof was born in 1960 in France. He is now a cleric of the Korsun diocese and a member of the French Orthodox Society for Bioethical Studies.

Citizenship was also granted to German citizens Remo and Birgit Kirsch, who moved from their country to the Nizhny Novgorod region to build a village for Germans.

The number of foreign citizens who received Russian citizenship in 2022 fell 6.4% year-on-year to just over 691,000.

In October 2023, the State Duma proposed a bill to simplify the issuance of residence permits to people who have direct ancestors in Russia.