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Montenegro President’s Overtures Cautiously Welcomed in Moscow

May 8, 201812:01
President Milo Djukanovic’s offer to improve his country’s icy relations with Russia has received a cautious welcome in Moscow, where anger over coup plot allegations and Montenegro’s accession to NATO remains.
Montenegro’s President Milo Djukanovic. Photo: EPA/Boris Pejovic.

Moscow-based media and analysts have expressed caution after Montenegro’s newly-installed president Milo Djukanovic said he is ready to work on improving relations with Russia.

In two statements ahead of April 15’s presidential elections and after the polls, veteran leader Djukanovic said he plans to improve the relationship with Moscow, which has cooled in recent years and worsened even more as Montenegro joined NATO last year despite Russian opposition.

“As far as Montenegro is concerned, and as far as I am concerned, talking about normalisation is knocking on an open door,” Djukanovic told Russian news agency RIA Novosti in an interview on April 21, adding that he regretted the deterioration of relations in recent years.

“Unfortunately, relations have worsened, quite unnecessarily. And only because Montenegro made a strategic decision to join NATO and the EU,” Djukanovic said.

Russian media widely quoted Djukanovic’s statement about the “strong and important links between the Montenegrin and Russian people” and the two nations’ “centuries-old tradition of friendship”.

Montenegrin Foreign Minister Srdjan Darmanovic on May 4 echoed Djukanovic’s warm words. Darmanovic, who is known for his sharp comments about Russian influence in the Balkans and on Montenegrin politics, said relations with Moscow should be improved and that everyone in Montenegro “thinks like that”.

The Russian Foreign Ministry’s spokesperson responded to Djukanovic’s olive branch on April 26 by saying that “relations need not have been ruined”.

Meanwhile influential Russian newspaper Kommersant wrote on April 23 that during the presidential race Djukanovic had expressed “absolute willingness to build good relations with Russia”.

The newspaper also noted that this was not just pre-election rhetoric, as Djukanovic confirmed his wish almost immediately after the election victory.

“There are no obstacles on our part to quickly turning the current unnatural page in Russian-Montenegrin relations,” the paper quoted an informed source in the Russian government as saying.

Kommersant also said that despite the cooling of relations, Russia’s NOVATEK energy company, in consortium with Italy’s ENI, was granted a concession for the exploration and production of oil and gas in Montenegro and that the visa-free stay for Russians in Montenegro was extended from one to three months.

“Any step by Russia towards the normalisation of relations will be met with full support from the Montenegrin side,” the same Russian government source said.

But Russian media also quoted a senior lecturer at the Department of Theory and History of International Relations of St. Petersburg State University, Evgeny Koloskov, saying that no breakthrough is going to happen.

“I do not think that we expect to see any fundamental changes in relations. Serious progress in the relations between Russia and Montenegro are not going to follow,” Koloskov said.

The Russian Institute for Strategic Studies also published a paper saying that Djukanovic has been taking Montenegro away from Serbia’s orbit for almost a quarter of a century and is “building it into the Western bloc of influence”.

“It is very likely that Milo Djukanovic’s victory in the presidential elections in Montenegro is the choice of the West, and not the people at all,” insisted Igor Pshenichnikov, an expert at the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies.

Montenegro’s once close relations with Russia cooled markedly after Podgorica joined Western sanctions against Moscow in 2014 over the crisis in Ukraine.

The relationship with Russia deteriorated further after Montenegro joined NATO last June. Moscow had warned that it would “freeze joint projects with Montenegro” if it joined the Atlantic alliance.

Relations become even tenser last October when Montenegro said Russians stood behind an alleged coup attempt, aimed at overthrowing the pro-Western government and assassinating then Prime Minister Djukanovic.

Russia called the accusations absurd and unfounded, with some media outlets in Moscow ridiculing Podgorica’s claims that its intelligence and security agencies only narrowly thwarted a Russian plot.

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