Prime Minister Putin seized the opportunity to meet up with some bikers from Serbia and Macedonia during his official visit to the Balkans. He got acquainted with them last year at a bike show near Ukrainian Sevastopol.
Together with his Serbian counterpart Mirko Cvetkovic and six members of the biker movement uniting riders from former Yugoslavia, Putin visited a stadium in Belgrade. There, an exhibition game between St. Petersburg Zenith and Belgrade’s Crvena Zvezda took place.
The Russian biker movement has close ties with their Balkan fellows. Last year an international biker show gathered in Sevastopol to celebrate the 65th anniversary of the Victory Day. Putin, who attended the event, took his time talking to visiting Serbs and apparently was very impressed.
Later, in an interview with Naomi Campbell, he mentioned one of them as an example of a “tough guy”. The man lost one leg during the war in Yugoslavia, but it didn’t strop him from riding a motorcycle and traveling as far as Crimea with is friends.