Good morning! Yesterday, a Russian opposition activist published a photo from Herceg Novi in which a man is walking through the streets of this city wearing a shirt with the logo of Prigozhin’s Wagner Group. After that, he received threats from local political activists who were or still are part of Abazovic’s URA.
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Wagner in Herceg Novi
Herceg Novi has a long history of presence of Russian emigrants. After the October Revolution, a large White Guard community found a home here, as evidenced by the chapel and the Russian cemetery from that time in this town. Even today, Herceg Novi, like other cities in Montenegro, has found itself in the role of a safe harbor for people who fled the war and the criminal regime of Putin.
Herceg Novi has thus become the home of a quite politically active community of the Russian-speaking diaspora, which for many years, even before the war, has been organizing protests in support of Navalny, Ukraine and against Putin’s regime.
Maksim, my Facebook friend, a Russian citizen, who had several media projects, in which, in his own way, he opposed the Kremlin’s policy, often participated in those protests. For example, Maksim launched a petition a few weeks ago to ban the “Z” symbol in Montenegro.
Yesterday, Maksim posted on Facebook a photo of a man with a PMC Wagner Group T-shirt, passing by the City Tavern in Herceg Novi. In his post, Maksim wonders how it is possible for the police not to react, bearing in mind that the OSCE, of which Montenegro is a member, declared Wagner a terrorist organization.
Immediately after the announcement, Maksim received threatening comments from people in the local community. A Facebook user with the name Teodor Supica told him in Russian that he would meet him and teach him a lesson, after which he would see if he would laugh.
That name sounded familiar to me, and then I remembered that it was about a man who was an activist of URA a few years ago, but also its candidate for councilor. Which is not surprising because those circles of URA activists were active participants in organizations and gatherings organized by IN4S and Igor Damjanovic. That’s the same group of people that prevented the concert of the Belarusian-Ukrainian band Lyapis Trubetskoy.
This situation is only a consequence of long-term activism and propaganda of circles close to pro-Serbian parties and the Serbian Orthodox Church (SPC). The network of Orthodox youth organizations and brotherhoods is something that no one in Montenegro deals with seriously enough. At the head of that network, as indisputable authorities, are the SPC hawks, the clergy of the Parachute Knights Order. In the first place, the Serbian bishop for the north of Montenegro, Metodije, and his secretary priest Miajlo Backovic, who, in addition to the mantle, sometimes know how to wear a uniform with the infamous red beret.
Metodije, the flag bearer of pro-Putin propaganda in Montenegro. Recently, he spoke again about the “evil West” and the need to return to mother Russia, which is a barrier to everything bad in the world. Not so long ago, he also organized Cossack parades in Danilovgrad, in the presence of the Russian ambassador.
Montenegro is a country of paradoxes, where people fleeing the regime meet local supporters of that regime. It is interesting to observe how Russian opposition activists also become targets of the same people whose propaganda actions are faced by a large number of Montenegrin activists.
That’s it for today. We wish you a pleasant rest of the day.
Kind regards,
Ljubomir Filipovic, CdM analyst and columnist
(The opinions and views of the authors of the columns are not necessarily those of the CdM editorial staff)
