Good morning! A synchronized media and DF campaign has begun to completely compromise the court proceedings and make the 2016 coup attempt meaningless. The coup case goes beyond the borders of Montenegro and has become a reference for many international and global studies on Russian influence. What would it mean if the whole case collapsed like a house of cards?
Who’s putting down “Montenegro coup”?
That 2016 autumn, on the election day, many things changed in the minds of the Montenegrin people. Many were instantly sobered by the information that the then Democratic Front was ready to cause bloodshed in Montenegro because Russia and Serbia had required so. At that time, among others, the “retired” leader of the Gendarmerie Dikic, who’s now an official in the public company ‘Srbija Šume’, was arrested. Bratislav Dikic, known as “Mali legija”. An interesting event from his career is the prisoners’ rebellion in the town of Nis, where he negotiated the surrender of rebels led by his future alleged wingman, Sasa Sindjelic.
The coup was supposed to be carried out by a group of militants, weekend-Chetniks, as well as special forces who were preparing to leave Zlatibor for Montenegro in Montenegrin police uniforms sewn for that purpose in Vranje. The weapons were supposed to come from Kosovo. Then it was allegedly thrown to the bottom of the lake. We know what happened afterwards.
The media and part of the opposition’s political elite immediately started to make the entire story meaningless. The Serbian media as well. Although Vucic then admitted the conspiracy and helped the investigation by filming the equipment in Belgrade. The way the investigation was carried out and how the public was informed about it helped a lot to make the whole story meaningless. Any normal person would suspect it despite the fact that Sindjelic had fought in Ukraine on the side of the Russians and despite the fact that there’s material evidence of his meetings and communication with Russian intelligence officers.
Following the state-sponsored terrorism in Kosovo and the transfer of weapons, the use of churches and monasteries for arming, even the most skeptical about the Montenegro coup should ponder over it. What was really being prepared in Montenegro and who plotted it. Maybe not only the Russians, but also official Serbia was involved. Maybe Serbia lured the Russians in order to “sell” them later? All of this may sound crazy, but anything is possible.
The biggest problem of Montenegro is not only corruption, but ignorance as well. At one point, Montenegro found itself in the center of attention of geopolitics and big interests but didn’t possess the capacity to manage it. Our services focused on organized crime, tobacco and drug trafficking, and got a lot dirty with all of that. We never had a serious counterintelligence infrastructure. We are perhaps the one whose scope was reporting to Belgrade.
The problem of our intelligence community is its undercapacity. The instinct to fight against the internal enemy was inherited from the Yugoslav service, and that’s it. Diplomacy, service, prosecution and judiciary were under-capacitated. Despite the bribery that is being talked about today, you have a perfect recipe for failure. We have neither people nor knowledge, nor the will to face serious security problems.
That’s all for today. Enjoy the rest of your day.
Kind regards,
Ljubomir Filipovic, CdM observer and columnist
(The opinions and views of our columnists aren’t necessarily those of the CdM news team)
