Vladimir Putin meets Belgrade bikers

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, currently on a working visit to Belgrade, met with representatives of the biker association of former Yugoslavia and attended a football match between youth teams Zenit St. Petersburg and Crvena Zvezda (Red Star) Belgrade. Putin and his Serbian counterpart Mirko Cvetkovic met with the bikers at the capital’s Marakana Stadium.

Six bikers from Macedonia and Serbia welcomed the Russian prime minister at the stadium entrance. Putin first met them last year at a bike show near Sevastopol on the Crimean Peninsula. They greeted each other, entered the stadium’s VIP box and started watching the game.

The Macedonian and Serbian bikers are representatives of Russia’s Night Wolves biker association in the Balkans and look just as impressive as their Russian friends.

Biker Goran Jovanovic from Nis told journalists that nearly all the bikers had been involved in the conflict in former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Although Jovanovic lost his right leg during the war, that does not prevent him from being a biker.

He said the bikers had big plans to hold numerous joint events with their Russian friends. In 2010, the bikers went on a grand tour of parts of Serbia hit by NATO bombing raids in 1999, laying wreaths at the graves of killed civilians.

Although the Marakana Stadium was not filled to capacity, the assembled spectators welcomed Putin with thundering applause, chanting “Russia!” and waving Russian flags.

Some of the fans carried portraits of Putin. After learning that the Russian prime minister was also watching the game, they started singing “Katyusha” and lit flares.

After the match, Vladimir Putin posed for a photo with members of the Night Wolves Biker Association.