In 2023 when Meg and I were going out of our mind, stuck in a mangrove swamp on Caribbean side of Panama, I came across information about Montenegro. Looking into it, I realized that if we want to ever have a country and a home in the part of the world and culture we come from, Montenegro is the only option left available to us. It lets Russians in without a visa and it lets them to become residents without a massive bribe of hundreds of thousands of dollars/euros for the privilege as it is the case everywhere else in Europe. And it has a sea coast allowing us to reach our new home with the boat and all our possessions.
With the war going on in Ukraine and Europe fearing Russians and closing doors on them, we made our way to the Bahamas, then to the West Indies desperately searching for a place to bring our boat up from the state of near total dilapidation we got it into by living in exile in tropical third world (with me, a Russian, we aren’t allowed anywhere in the West).
We found a boat yard in Sint Maarten, the Dutch side of the island which I was miraculously permited to enter. We gave our boat a total refit, doing all the work ourselves, and started our voyage back — crossing the Atlantic and the Mediterranean — on August 4th, 2025.
Our estimated time of arrival to Mintenegro is mid to end of October 2025.
As we are getting closer to the Adriatic sea, tensions between Russia and the West keep escalating. It is a real possibility that at any time Montenegro, under EU pressure, can begin requiring Russians to apply for a visa to visit or will close the border for them altogether.
