Nikolic for The Geopost: Vucic aims for the unification of Montenegro with Serbia

The Serbian President, Aleksandër Vučić intends to unite Montenegro with Serbia and everything depends on the politics in Montenegro if he will achieve his goal, says in an interview for The Geopost, Danica Nikolic, editor at the Montenegrin portal M.

According to her, the goal of creating a Serbian world cannot be achieved peacefully, a threat that, as she says, also includes Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina and North Macedonia.

While commenting on the last meeting of the president of the Republika Srpska in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Milorad Dodik, with the Speaker of the Montenegrin Parliament, Andrea Mandić, Nikolic says that the messages that were given there are chilling.

“(The messages) Especially those related to the so-called Serbian world are chilling and can sound, if we analyze them well enough, even threatening in the sense that if their goal for the so-called Serbian world is not achieved peacefully, there will be other events as well”, she says.

However, she emphasizes that such plans are destined to fail, but adds that forces are constantly needed to engage in the fight against such an idea.

“So, it will fail again this time, it only depends on whether that failure will happen in 2024 or 2030, a little important. The important thing is to have the strength to fight against this,” Nikolic continues.

She also comments on Montenegro’s relations with NATO, for which she emphasizes that according to the reliable information she has, the alliance has a reservation towards Montenegro, especially when it comes to the sharing of confidential information.

Full interview

Geopost: “Montenegro will again be part of the Serbian state,” Vučić announced at the end of May 2006. With the forces that have been leading Montenegro for the past four years, is Vučić on the way to achieving that goal?

Nikolić: Of course, he is on the way to achieving it, but it is up to us, to the political and social forces in Montenegro, whether he will reach that goal. It’s not that there weren’t such attempts before, not only during Vučić’s rule, but also during the rule of Vojislav Koštunica and even Boris Tadić, who today is considered a somewhat more progressive Serbian president than Vučić. So, there have always been those attempts, there always will be. As I said, it is up to us whether we will allow such a goal to be reached. All events during the past four years testify to this. When we talk about it, a lot of things are forgotten because they take place at an incredible speed and it is difficult even for us journalists to follow every event and every segment of political events, that is, not to follow but also to remember and after some time, now after four years, to put together a more complete picture of it.

The last thing that happened was the visit of Milorad Dodik, who, through Vučić, is also a direct proxy of Russia and Vladimir Putin in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in the entire region. The messages that they (Andrija Mandić and Dodik) sent, especially those concerning the so-called Serbian world, are creepy and can sound, if we analyze them well enough and if we read and listen to them enough times, even threatening in the sense that their goal is reached of the so-called Serbian world does not come peacefully, so that there could be other developments.

In this sense, let’s recall Andrija Mandić’s statement from a year ago, when he was still in the opposition, that he called on his war comrades to unearth their weapons, when, as far as I remember, the Law on Freedom of Religion was being debated while it was still being debated in the Parliament. So, these are constant intentions and a constant threat for the entire region, not only for Montenegro, but also for Bosnia and Herzegovina, for Kosovo, and even for Macedonia, which is least mentioned but is actually a threat to it as well. Other countries in the Balkans, such as Croatia, are protected by EU membership.

Montenegro is a partial member of NATO, with the fact that we must remind that NATO protects only the external borders of the country. Therefore, if any retrograde current, retrograde party, retrograde government, whatever you want, causes any incident within the country itself, NATO cannot help us, and I also do not like to talk about the need to rely on some forces that are outside the country. Therefore, we have to finish the affairs in our countries, whatever it is about, ourselves, we have to fight against such things, against retrograde policies, and then we will be more appreciated by those to whom we constantly refer, first of all I mean the EU and NATO.

Therefore, it is not impossible for Aleksandar Vučić through Andrija Mandić to achieve that goal if we leave it to them. If we behave responsibly towards our country, towards our home countries, of course this will not happen. I believe that this is the ultimate outcome, no matter how difficult and complicated it may seem at the moment and no matter how impossible it seems, but I believe that in the end it will not come to that. Because it is the same idea that has been changing its shape throughout the centuries, so it is not a new project when we talk about the Serbian world, but an old story of great Serbia that has been in force since the famous Načertani. And that idea always failed. So, it will fail this time too, it just depends on whether that failure will happen in 2024 or 2030. Whichever is less is important. It is important that there are forces to fight against it.

Geopost: Recently, the Europe Sad Movement (PES), of which President Milatović and Prime Minister Spajić belong, disintegrated. Are we talking about ideological divisions in the camp, calculating games from Belgrade… What is hidden behind everything?

Nikolić: I think that in general Vučić no longer needs a party, he has enough of them in Montenegro that work in his interest. There are only a couple of parties in the opposition that do not work in his interest, so one more, I suppose, would only be a burden to him. And at the end of the day, the Democratic Front is finally as its exponent, that is, Andrija Mandić and Milan Knežević, in which a lot of money from Serbia was loaded, and now the region already knows everything about it, through Vladimir Mandić and his business partners who came to Montenegro to bring in money, they were literally arrested in Montenegro for illegally bringing in a large amount of money before the elections. So I don’t think he needs another party. The point about PES and the current Prime Minister Spajić and President Milatović is that they are ideologically undefined. In other words, Spajić is more ideologically undefined, Jakov Milatović defined himself ideologically the moment he identified himself and presented Momir Bulatović as his political idol.

Geopost: And how realistic are the comparisons we read and hear, especially in the Serbian media, between Spajić and Milo Đukanović?

Nikolić: No, no, that’s a narrative that suits someone, let’s say it’s Vučić or Milatović’s allies from the DF in Montenegro. At the moment when Đukanović and Bulatović parted ways in the DPS, that conflict had a historical character for Montenegro. We knew then that if Bulatović’s forces won, we would remain stuck in the then version of the Serbian world, that is, Milosevic’s idea of a common state for all Serbs. And we knew that if Đukanović prevailed in that fight, that we would get out and that we would take the European path, as far as it would go. It was a historic moment and a turning point for Montenegro and for its history, which will one day be interpreted.

However, this is not it, so Milatović and Spajić did not clash over ideology, over politics like Bulatović and Đukanović, they clashed over certain interests, supremacy in the party. Jakov Milatović very often criticized Spajić’s moves, not only since Spajić became prime minister, but also long before that. A year ago, the portal I edit, wrote about their internal party conflict, which started on the line between Jakov Milatović and Andrej Milović, the current Minister of Justice, who was also expelled from the party when Milatović left. With that move, Spajić, by excluding Milović from the party of his closest associate, was trying to depreciate the rest of Jakov Milatović’s supporters in his own party.

So, a year ago we wrote about it, and they denied it very strongly at the time. Even Mr. Milović, who was not a minister at the time, had a verbal confrontation with me on social media and claimed that we were spreading propaganda. Here, then, after a year, it turned out that their party conflict culminated in Milatović’s exit from the party and Milović’s expulsion from the party. There you can see which line he is on and between whom the conflict started.

Spajić is not a man who would invest too much in the defense of an ideology. He is most interested in money, there are other things, and he actually sees the position of prime minister as an opportunity to achieve those interests more easily than he would be able to if he were not in office. He can also be nice to hang out with, but you would never want such a man to run your household, let alone the country. Milatović is something else. Milatović is a man in love with himself, who is convinced that he won the presidential elections for his own sake and not because people voted against Đukanović and the DPS, which is the basic idea. Especially if we know that Milatović stepped in 20 days before the elections as a replacement for Spajić, who had a problem with dual citizenship. Milatović is therefore a man who is very self-infatuated, who clearly defined his ideology by identifying himself with Momir Bulatović. That is the ideology of the Serbian world, the Open Balkans, call it whatever you want, that story has countless forms and all those forms have only one goal – the creation of a Serbian state that would deal with territories and not people. That conflict is not as historical as the one in DPS and will not have such significance. It will have significance for the current government and the current moment in Montenegro, but it will not have historical significance. In 20 years, hardly anyone will mention the breakup of PES and even remember the names of those people. Almost 30 years after the dissolution of the DPS, we still use that moment as a parameter for comparing the importance of some political event. So, this is not it, it will pass much faster, the government will change again, whether through the reconstruction of the parliamentary majority or whether there will be elections again, we will see when that moment actually comes. Therefore, it is not even close to the Bulatović-Đukanović conflict.

Geopost: How reliable is Montenegro today as a member of NATO, taking into account the entire situation in the security sector? The Minister of Justice, you mentioned him Milović, claims that Russian influence is decreasing. Is that correct?

Nikolić: The Russian influence is not much smaller, and I would disagree with him there. But regardless of the official statements coming from NATO and the Western partners that Montenegro is a reliable partner of NATO, my information, which is not official but very reliable, indicates that NATO has a certain reservation towards Montenegro, especially when sharing of confidential information in question during the last four years. We will recall that the former director of ANB (National Security Agency) Dejan Vukšić (Prime Nov. now in the position of advisor to President Milatović) revealed the names of foreign agents working in Montenegro to the deputies who were accused of the coup attempt in Montenegro. So that was his first move when he came to the head of ANB, he claimed that it was by accident, but such things do not happen by accident. And this is where the gap in the NATO pact towards Montenegro has already begun. Of course, no one will ever say openly that we are not a reliable partner and that we must not do that anymore, but the warnings arrive in an unofficial way, the warnings arrive in such a way that you realize that you are excluded – like when someone throws you out of the company, which is said to be sitting at the table and talking about something and trying not to hear what they are saying. So, they understand that essentially, when we exclude the current government, that is, when we ignore it a little, Montenegro is a reliable partner, because it was Montenegro’s desire and intention to join NATO and that all of that can change very quickly. In this sense, it is a reliable partner, in terms of the desire for membership and in terms of the support that NATO currently enjoys in Montenegro. In terms of the executive power, I am sure that my sources have the right information and that things are somewhat different than what Montenegrin officials and the leaders of the NATO alliance officially inform us in public appearances.

/The Geopost