Ulcinj’s former mayor and Democratic Party leader, Fatmir Djeka, could once again become mayor of the troubled seaside town if he wins the local elections in Montenegro in January – despite a slew of unanswered questions about the town’s chaotic finances hanging over his head.

Smoking one cigarette after another at the café Piano in the town centre, the waiter brings him drinks that other guests have treated him to. “It is common knowledge; the people of Ulcinj are for Djeka,” he boasts.

If so, that might seem surprising. Since March, the special prosecutor’s office for organized crime and corruption has been investigating the use of budget funds in Ulcinj for the time when Djeka was mayor from 2014 to 2016, when he resigned.

Power in the local assembly then regrouped. His party remained in a ruling coalition with its rival, Forca, but has been weakened by the arrival of a newcomer, the main national ruling party, the Democratic Party of Socialists, DPS.

Djeka, meanwhile, is unrepentant about his record. He insists that Forca and its leader, Ulcinj’s current mayor, Nazif Cungu, are doing whatever it takes to compromise him before the elections, sending material about his alleged abuses to the special prosecutor.

“I would like someone to step up and say in the open if they know that Fatmir Djeka did something [wrong] … I did not do anything in my own interest … but in the interests of the city… everything was correct, in accordance with the regulations and the laws,” he says.

An independent investigation by BIRN and CIN-CG casts doubt on that assertion.

It shows that the office of Mayor Djeka, despite the town’s financial woes and frequent freezing of its accounts, exceeded its planned budget by at least 135,000 euros in 2015 alone.

It spent budget money, among other things, on buying perfumes and leather goods, which Djeka says were gifts for various delegations and women working in the municipality.

Some of the invoices for purchased goods appear also to have been photo-shopped.

The price of leather bags for councillors, for example, has been altered from 179 euros to 500 euros, to align the figure on the invoice with the amount on the bank payment order.

Much else that was ordered has gone missing. Leather furniture, air-conditioning units, dining tables and chairs and many other things were all invoiced to the mayor’s office.

However, they can no longer be traced, according to the findings of a municipal committee that has carried out an inventory.

Some suspect also that construction material that the municipality ordered ahead of 2009 general elections, the 2010 local elections and the 2016 general elections was used to buy votes for Djeka’s Democratic Party.

Documents obtained by BIRN and CIN-CG also point to possible avoidance of the public procurement procedures.

However, confronted with the array of findings, Djeka defends himself robustly. “These are malicious, politicized questions… We have only one term for this: ‘A tall tree attracts much wind,’” he said.

Current Mayor Cungu meanwhile insists that he has not informed the state prosecutor about his predecessor’s suspected abuses for political reasons but because it is his responsibility to do so.

“If, as mayor, I am informed about missing goods, then I need to inform the prosecution, so that they can check whether some criminal act has taken place,” he said.

However, two independent sources in the special prosecutor’s office for organized crime and corruption confirmed to BIRN and CIN-CG that Cungu himself is also under its investigation, although no details about this investigation have been released.

Cungu insists he knows nothing about that investigation,

“I don’t know. They came to the municipality, and what they took, I never asked about afterwards, I just tried to be helpful, so they could find any document they needed,” he said.

Many investigations, but no trials in court:

Although the town of 22,000 people, 70 per cent of whom are ethnic Albanian, has been unlucky with its leaders, Montenegro’s national authorities have been curiously reluctant to pursue matters to court.

Over the last ten years, although mayors, directors of public companies, and leaders of parties have all come under investigation, hardly any trials have ever taken place.

One of the oldest towns on the Adriatic coast, blessed with long sandy beaches, Ulcinj ought to be far more prosperous than it is.

Instead, the municipal bank account is often frozen, and successful local companies are few. The average salary, at 428 euros a month, is 20 per cent below the national average in Montenegro.

The Democratic Party and Forca have been fighting for the Albanian votes for years.

Leaders of both parties have rotated as mayors, and although the parties are rivals, they still rule the town together in coalition. Cooperation, however, is not smooth.

As a result of the fights between the parties in 2014 and 2015, when Djeka was mayor, the local assembly failed to vote on the annual accounts, which resulted in the breakup of the coalition.

Due to the lack of a working majority in the assembly, its operations were blocked for months.

Andrija Cetkovic, the councilor from the small opposition Socialist People’s Party, who has often attacked what he calls the council’s reckless spending, describes the political feuds in Ulcinj as pure theatre.

“They fight by day and then make up by night,” he said.

“The fighting lasts until they get a sufficient number of votes, and then they usually form a coalition and assume office. Then they rotate: one minute it’s one mayor and then it’s the other. They always leave suspicious deals behind them, but this is never seen through,” he said.

Gzim Hajdinaga, a party colleague of Djeka’s, a former minister in the Montenegrin government for human and minority rights, was mayor from 2006 to 2011 while Djeka was the municipal secretary for finances.

In 2012, Hajdinaga signed a settlement with the high state prosecutor, so that instead of standing trial for abuse of office and enabling illegal construction to the detriment of the municipality, he gave 10,000 euros to the local maternity hospital.

He was recently appointed director of Berza struje, a new mainly state-owned energy company in Montenegro.

In the meantime, an investigation continues into the affairs of the Hotel Galeb whose investor was allowed to tear it down in 2008 – when Hajdinaga was a mayor – without ever investing the promised 15 million euros.

Hajdinaga was succeeded by Cungu who was mayor from 2011 to 2013.

In 2014 the prosecutor opened an investigation against Cungu over dealings related to the repurposing of state land at the Sas site in Ulcinj. Allegedly, he engineered the adoption of town planning rules enabling construction in that area, where he, too, owned land.

In May 2014, however, the basic state prosecutor’s office dropped criminal charges.

One source from the Special prosecutor’s office said the investigation into the Sas case is still ongoing, while another source released no details about the case, but said the investigation was nearing its end.

The basic state prosecutor’s office in Ulcinj investigated Djeka’s management of the public water and sewage company, Vodovod i kanalizacija, from 2010 to 2012, for illegally hiring 79 people.

That probe ended with Djeka agreeing instead to pay 1,200 euros to a facility for children with special needs.

The Democratic Party, as a legal entity, and its head, Djeka, were fined because state auditors determined that 23,430 euros had been withdrawn from the party’s account in 2013 and 2014 without appropriate documentation. It was nearly 40 per cent of the party’s available funds.

Dritan Abazovic, head of the URA party, says the town is a victim of a secretive “political deal” between the Albanian parties that dominate Ulcinj and the nationally ruling DPS.

The DPS has ruled the country for 27 years, often in coalition with minority parties, and its influence on state institutions has been frequently criticized by civil society groups and opposition.

“The DPS has enabled the Albanian parties to do literally whatever they want in Ulcinj in exchange for their support on a state level,” Abazovic claimed.

Leather furniture and much more went missing:

The financial affairs of the municipality were especially chaotic in 2014 and 2015.

In 2015, salaries for employees in the municipal administration and public companies were running four to eight months late.

During 2014 and first half of 2015, 2.5 million euros were collected through enforcement from the municipality, and its bank account was blocked for two months at the end of 2015 due to court claims for half a million euros.

That same year, however, according to the external auditor, the mayor’s office spent 162,000 euros on business trips, phone bills and entertainment, far above the approved sum of 75,000.

Another budget line, marked as “other expenditures”, was approved at 15,000 euros but was exceeded by 31,000 euros.

That same year, 2015, Djeka’s office was invoiced by a luxury boutique, Tenero, for four purchases costing 4,500 euros, which the mayor paid for personally in the bank. On one day alone, on April 30, 2015, seven perfumes were bought by mayor.

But, in his interview for BIRN and CIN-CG, Djeka defended the purchases, saying they went legitimately on gifts for “various delegations who visited Ulcinj for different events” over that period.

“There were numerous delegations and levels. I cannot remember exactly, they were gifts for all the people who were here … I would not go into details regarding the perfumes,” he said.

“There were also gifts for female employees in the municipality because they sometimes have some holidays; I’m not talking about Women’s Day, but something else,” he added.

He said the municipal Secretariat for Finances and Budget should have monitored and recorded such expenses, and it was beyond his scope.

However, Valdet Adzemovic, who headed the Secretariat for Finances and Budget in this period, said the mayor was responsible, as he was also in charge of budget supervision.

“It is true that I had a deposited signature specimen [for such invoices], but my signature is not on any of the invoices that you have mentioned,” he said.

The mayoral office’s dealings from 2014 with the company Stylos, which supplied office goods, are also unclear.

The figure on the invoice that Stylos delivered to our reporter, following persistent requests, is lower than the figure on the invoice filed in the municipal accounts, with Djeka’s signature on it.

The invoice filed with the municipality has clearly been edited, as the price of business bags for councillors has jumped from 179.19 euros to 500 euros, while the price of the briefcases has risen from 114.55 euros to 499.80 euros.

The invoice from the company also refers to completely different items.

Sasa Femic, from Stylos, who sent the invoice to the author of this article, said by email that he could not explain such big discrepancies in the figures.

Djeka, however, said that he could not remember what was bought from the company and did not know why the figures on the invoice had been changed.

“I am not challenging my signature, but whether the sum was properly added up is not something I am supposed to check, but Finances [Secretariat],” he said.

Former Secretary for Finances Adzemovic, meanwhile, says he is not the right person to answer such questions, which should be put to the people who signed for the receipt of the items and made the payment of the invoice. The bank receipt shows Djeka’s signature.

It is also unknown where many of the items invoiced to the account of the mayor’s office during 2014 and 2015 ended up.

Missing purchases include 14 air-conditioners, 11 carpets and mats, five sets of leather furniture and closets, 20 dining chairs, a dining table, six mobile phones, four laptops, two projectors, seven printers, several office desks, two vacuum cleaners, shelves and more.

The municipal committee that in June this year conducted an inventory for 2014, 2015 and 2016 said the total value of the missing items amounted 31,125.80 euros.

The assembly session on October 26 voted to form a committee to investigate what had happened with these items.

But Djeka says that while he was informed about various things that the municipality had ordered, he did not oversee these matters himself.

“The municipality as an institution and as a building sometimes needs various things … But, again, I repeat, this is not my responsibility, or in my scope. Chairs and tables are not my responsibility, regardless of whether I ordered them or not,” he said.

Construction material handed out ‘to buy votes’:

On the eve of the parliamentary elections of 2009 and the local elections of 2010, Djeka was the municipal secretary for finances, while his party colleague, Hajdinaga, was mayor.

During this time, construction material worth more than 65,000 euros was ordered from an Ulcinj-based company, Gradja komerc, according to invoices obtained by BIRN and CIN-CG.

It is also unclear where this material ended up. It was collected directly from Gradja komerc by people who were not municipal employees but had only Djeka’s approval, as seen on the dispatch notes. 

Djeka’s political opponents believe the Democratic Party distributed this material, effectively to buy votes.

The councilor Cetkovic says such activities on the part of the Democratic Party “always happened before elections; the intensity would pick up just before the elections, and it would end a few months after the elections.

“These are enormous funds, and we do not know where they were invested. The municipality did not need that much [construction] material,” he added.

Asllan Alaj, whose name is found on a several dispatch notes from that time, says the municipality employed him for only 120 days part-time, and that he took the goods with Djeka’s approval, “exclusively for the needs of street lighting in rural areas”.

He said there were other cases when he signed dispatch notes while other people took the goods, however, and he is unaware where these goods ended up.

Djeka, however, claims he did not authorize this business and that it all “went through the responsible secretariat, so I don’t have any other response to that; this was years ago, a decade ago practically.”

A large number invoices from 2009 and 2010, worth a total of 40,263.33 euros, were paid after four years, when Djeka became mayor. This was contrary to the Law on Contracts and Torts, under which all debts of this type expire after three years.

Djeka said he knew nothing about this. Former Secretary for Finance and Budget Adzemovic, however, claims differently. “The payment orders were issued by the mayor,” he said.

Village got power poles that were never connected:

In the narrow lanes of the village of Lisna Bori , on the hill above Ulcinj, near the Albanian border, stand concrete power supply poles that have been placed in the ground.

Lisna Bori is just one of several underdeveloped villages in the region Vladimir, whose residents have paid a price for Ulcinj’s party battles before elections; the power poles have never been connected to the electricity supply.

“We had some requests from the border region,” Djeka recalled. “This area did not have a town plan, and we acted on the request of the local communities to help them. Poles were placed in the right positions and locals dug the holes themselves and erected them for free.”

His office duly ordered a hundred such poles, and accompanying equipment, worth 41,000, instead of the Secretariat for Utility Works, as envisaged by the rulebook.

The poles came from the Elektrofor company in Podgorica. The procurement was carried during December 2015 and early January 2016. Most of these invoices were signed off by Djeka.

Intriguingly, all the invoices were for sums below 5,000 euros. They thereby circumvented public procurement rules according to which, at that time, a public call including at least three bids from different suppliers was necessary if the value of the order exceeded 5,000 euros.

In a single day, this company issued three invoices for a total of 14,000 euros, each of which was just under the 5,000 limit.

Djeka claims there was due competition for the order for the poles. However, the reports delivered by the municipality to the Public Procurements Administration for 2015 and 2016 reveal no record of any public call for bids.

The sudden erection of the power poles in September, several months after Djeka resigned, just a month before the elections, took the municipality by surprise.

Deputy Mayor Hatidza Djoni, from the Democratic Union of Albanians, remembers how they received reports from citizens saying that poles for electricity were being placed in villages around Ulcinj.

The communal police who are part of the town’s administration then went into the field and stopped the work.

Villagers that we approached in Lisna Bori did not want to comment on the failed initiative.

While Djeka holds no official function today, apart from that of the party leader, Ulcinj’s problems rumble on as before.

Budget solvency continues, so the account of the municipality was blocked again in August. Salaries in the administration are running two months late.

One retiree from Ulcinj, aged 67, said local people feel confused and despondent.

“I do not know … whether there is criminal activity, as some say, but I do know that things are not good. It is time for some new people, and not to have just three or four of them rotating in various functions,” he said.

“We have become so poor; even having the best beach and sea in this part of the Adriatic aren’t helping,” he concluded.

 

Ministries Turn Blind Eye to Mismanagement

Government officials remain keen to shift responsibility solely to the local officials for the poor state of affairs in the Ulcinj municipality.

The Ministry of Finance, whose directorate monitors the budgets of local governments, confirmed that Ulcinj municipality failed to submit its annual financial statements for 2014 and 2015 for review, although it is bound by law to do so. No steps have been taken to penalize it, however.

The other competent state authority, the Ministry of Interior, which in 2014 and 2015 was still responsible for supervising municipal operations, also took no steps to intervene in Ulcinj, according to the Ministry of Public Administration, which in the meantime has assumed oversight of municipalities.

Criticizing both the ministries of finance and public administration for their unwillingness to take control of the situation, the leader of the URA party, Abazovic, says Ulcinj remains trapped in a vicious circle in which the administration is incompetent, anarchic, and takes numerous decisions that are both illegal and detrimental to the interests of local citizens.

“The behavior of the Ministry of Finance is completely illogical given that the municipality of Ulcinj has been part of a recovery plan for years, so they [in Ulcinj] have an additional obligation to report and seek approval related to financial operations,” he noted.

If Russia really is investing heavily in an army of bots, hackers and fake news sites to affect the outcome of elections everywhere from the US to Germany, it doesn’t need to waste any money doing the same in Montenegro, where Moscow’s agenda is well-represented by local media.

After the country joined NATO in June, the pro-Russian sentiments of Serbs living in Montenegro who were against membership of the Western military alliance have not diminished; nor have those of their compatriots in Serbia.

At least five new websites with pro-Russian agendas have been launched in the Montenegrin capital Podgorica this year; the latest of them was Ujedinjenje (Unification).

Gaining in popularity, active on social media and quoted by mainstream media in Montenegro, they all carry content that promotes the Kremlin political line, which is against NATO and the Montenegrin government, and support one or another of the Serb opposition parties in Montenegro.

Research by BIRN and CIN-CG has shown that the founders of these sites are not Russian media moguls or officials tasked with spreading propaganda, but local journalists, representatives of pro-Russian organisations or supporters of the Montenegrin opposition. No Russian-owned media were registered last year in Montenegro.

The founders of the new websites say they lack staff and sometimes struggle to pay contributors – but insist that they receive no Russian money.

“We never asked for or received any money from the Russians,” said Dobrilo Dedeic, the owner of the Ujedinjenje site and a former Montenegrin MP.

“We work with very modest funds, myself and a few people who share the same beliefs. Sometimes with no money at all,” he added.

Ujedinjenje supports the unification of Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia’s Serb-dominated entity Republika Srpska, which it sees as a single ethnic space that should have even closer ties with Russia.

This idea is echoed by dozens of similar right-wing websites that were launched in Belgrade in 2015 and 2016. Content is exchanged regularly between the Montenegrin and Serbian sites and often the same contributors write for multiple outlets.

All the Belgrade-based sites heavily reuse content produced in the Serbian language by Russian media – the Sputnik agency, online outlet NewsFront and the website Russia Beyond.

These Russian outlets appeared in the Balkans two years ago, when Montenegro was negotiating its way towards NATO membership; they opened headquarters in Belgrade and engaged contributors from Podgorica.

Some analysts argue that Russia’s media strategy is to feed Montenegrin outlets with pro-Moscow news from sites like Sputnik in Serbian, giving it more impact because it is republished in a local context.

Others say that the new Montenegrin sites are not part of a Russian strategic plan, but more of an authentic local response that reflects the bitter internal political divisions within Montenegro.

The most recent opinion survey carried out by the Centre for Democracy and Human Rights in June, just after Montenegro joined NATO, suggested that 39.8 per cent of the population of Montenegro still opposed the country being a member of the Western alliance.

Alleged Russian-backed plot

The centuries-long friendship between Montenegro and Russia first cooled in March 2014, when Montenegro took the EU’s lead and imposed sanctions on Russia.

Before that, the country had been experiencing an influx of Russians visiting as tourists, buying properties, and about 13,000 of them settling permanently on the Montenegrin coast.

Russian media interest in the country started to grow in the second half of 2015, when the strongest opposition alliance, the Democratic Front, organised protests across the country demanding the resignation of the government led by veteran Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic who wanted to join NATO and align the country directly with the West.

The interest continued in 2016, after nationwide polls in October and what the authorities claimed was a Russian-backed coup attempt on election day, with the intention of killing Djukanovic, preventing the country joining NATO and bringing the pro-Russian Democratic Front alliance into power.

The Montenegrin prosecution claimed two Russians believed to be members of the military intelligence agency GRU were the main suspects in the case. Twenty mostly Serbian citizens were arrested on charges of terrorism and attempting to stage a coup.

Two opposition leaders from the Democratic Front, Andrija Mandic and Milan Knezevic, are now standing trial for their alleged involvement in the alleged plot.

These events sharply polarised the public in Montenegro, where the media was already divided between pro- and anti-government.

The new pro-Moscow websites offered a ‘third way’, in contrast to the mainstream media, which, whether they support the government or not, are EU-oriented and have no taste for pro-Russian sentiments.

Newcomers growing in popularity

Ujedinjenje, Sedmica, Princip, Nova Rijec and Magazin are the newcomers to Montenegro’s online community, joining the already established and highly popular pro-Russian IN4S.

Most of them post their content in Serbian to the VKontakte social network, the Russian version of Facebook used by the majority of Russian citizens.

Montenegrin law doesn’t insist on the registration of websites, while sites don’t have pages listing their owners or founders. However it was possible to track them down was possible through their social media activity, or through the crediting of their content by mainstream media.

It is too early to say what kind of influence Nova Rijec and Magazin have, but Sedmica, Ujedinjenje and Princip are growing in popularity.

Sedmica (http://www.sedmica.me/) was launched by a Montenegrin journalist, Donko Rakocevic, eight months ago. It became popular quickly among the country’s Serb community and the Democratic Front’s politicians and supporters because of its interviews with Serbian and Russian politicians, scholars and artists.

Rakocevic himself wrote most of the editorial articles and did the interviews with the opposition leaders.

“We are more culturally oriented towards Russia and the East in general, but in the political sense, we are equally critical towards Moscow as well as the EU and US,” Rakocevic said.

A decade ago, major amounts of Russian money came in to Montenegro, but Rakocevic claimed that not a single rouble of it was spent on local media outlets.

He said he was surprised by the success of the Sedmica site, with thousands people visiting it monthly.

Ujedinjenje  (http://ujedinjenje.com/) started in July, promoting the personal views of its founders, Robert Zizic and Dobrilo Dedeic.

Zizic is a former member of the Montenegrin branch of the Serbian Radical Party of Vojislav Seseslj, who was tried by the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague, while Dedeic is a former member of a Serbian National Party in Montenegro.

Dedeic said one of the reasons for establishing the site was dissatisfaction with the Russian embassy in Podgorica, because it did not do enough to promote Russian interests and anti-NATO, pro-Serbian ideas.

His partner in Ujedinjenje, Zizic, is the high commander of the Balkan Cossack Army, a branch of the Russian traditionalist military movement.

Zizic also established an ultra-nationalist movement called Srpski odbor Zavjetnici (Serbian Oath Keepers) in Montenegro. He believes that “Russia is the only true, natural ally of Montenegro”. (link for the interview http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/montenegro-s-right-wingers-call-for-closer-ties-with-russia-03-15-2016.)

Ujedinjenje has made an impact on the mainstream media; in recent months the site was quoted by a pro-government outlet because it criticised the opposition Democratic Front. LINK(http://portalanalitika.me/clanak/264256/srpska-kuca-u-podgorici-fiinansijska-injekcija-za-stranacke-funkcionere-i-nvo).

“We have big plans if we could provide the resources. For now, we are just online and we plan to open TV Ujedinjenje,” said Dedeic.

‘Surviving on pure enthusiasm’

Princip (https://www.princip.me/crna-gora/) is run by Vladimir Vukovic, a Montenegrin journalist who contributes to several pro-Russian online publications in Belgrade. He regularly writes about what he calls “discrimination against the Serbian community in Montenegro”, NATO and Russia-Montenegro relations.

He said that his outlet survives on the “pure enthusiasm” of him and his friends.

“It would be my honour to get money from Russia, but I did not,” Vukovic said.

“That is what the people from the West cannot understand… that we do something without money and for ideas,” he added.

With a special page dedicated to news and analysis from Russia, Princip is mostly focused on anti-NATO topics. Its slogan declares: “Princip says what others are silent about!”

Apart from news about the activities of Montenegro’s opposition parties, anti-NATO groups and Russian analysts, the website also regularly quotes ultra-right organisations from Serbia such as Zavetnici.

One of the fastest-growing news sites in Montenegro is IN4S, considered to be close to the Democratic Front because some of its contributors are members and supporters of the alliance.

Gojko Raicevic, the editor and founder of the IN4S website, said that it was created to promote and protect Serbs’ interests in Montenegro and to respond to the “aggressive US propaganda that is spreading through the Montenegrin media”.

Raicevic also heads an anti-NATO coalition comprising several NGOs called ‘No to War, No to NATO’. During the US presidential elections last year, his IN4S website launched a campaign urging Serbian-Americans to vote for Donald Trump because he was “a friend of the Russians and Serbs”.

IN4S has become one of the mainstream outlets, along with daily newspapers Vijesti and Dan and several local broadcasters, that have been publishing insider information from pro-Russian parties.

Its articles and investigations about the alleged coup attempt are often quoted by other local and regional media; in recent months, it has also published dozens of interviews with Moscow-based academics and Kremlin officials.

IN4S’s interviews and articles are often mentioned during the coup case trial, which started in May, with the defence lawyers demanding the prosecution and court investigate the website’s revelations and its claims about the state’s role in what they claimed to be a ‘fake case’.

IN4S’s posts are regularly shared and promoted by another opposition leader, Nabojsa Medojevic, and by many other MPs from the Democratic Front.

Pro-Russian messages from Belgrade

Pro-Russian and right-wing websites such as Vostok, Fakti, Kremlin.rs, SrbinINFO, Veseljenska, Nacional.rs and many others that were founded in Serbia are also popular among the pro-Russian readership in Montenegro.

“Their newsrooms are small, only a few people, plus friendly contributors, mostly writing for free,” a Montenegrin contributor to a Belgrade-based site, who asked to remain anonymous, told BIRN/CIN-CG.

“They oppose [Serbian President] Aleksandar Vucic, who they perceive as a friend of the West and suspect could betray Kosovo,” the contributor added.

Their stories are circulated on social networks and republished by local Montenegrin websites, and they also carry content from Montenegrin sites and Russian media in the Serbian language.

“Our articles are regularly republished by all the patriotic sites in Serbia, such as SerbINFO, Vaseljenska... that are also critical towards the Serbian government,” said Dedeic from Ujedinjene.

Fakti and Vostok sites in Serbia share same pro-Russian editorial policy.

Vostok, which describes its content as “news from Russia in the Serbian language”, covers Montenegrin news extensively with items mostly relating to Serbian Orthodox Church in the country and the opposition Democratic Front.

In August, Vostok published a comment article by Democratic Front leader Andrija Mandic (http://www.vostok.rs/index.php?option=btg_novosti&catnovosti=5&idnovost=103292&Polozaj-Srba-u-Crnoj-Gori-%E2%80%93-aktuelni-trenutak-i-predlog-buduceg-djelovanja) alleging ethnic, religious and linguistic discrimination against Serbs in Montenegro.

The Belgrade-based Fakti website has a similar editorial policy when it comes to Montenegro and what right-wingers see as its ‘anti-Russian’ government.

According to the website’s homepage, Fakti mainly covers anti-NATO and Orthodox Church topics from Montenegro.

Seeing an opportunity in the Balkans

Marat Guelman, a Moscow art dealer who now lives in Budva, is the most prominent member of the Russian community in Montenegro and the organiser of several high-profile cultural events in the country.

Guelman, who left Moscow because he opposes Putin, told BIRN and CIN-CG that he believes that the real Russian foreign policy influence is exerted on the Balkans by Russian mainstream media that publish or broadcast in the Serbian language.

“Russian media that have been printed in Montenegro for years have been shut down or are just printing periodically, but significant impact is actually coming through Russian media and websites with local branches’ headquarters in Belgrade,” Guelman said.

Russia’s Sputnik news agency arrived in Belgrade in 2015, and since then it has become a major supplier of often highly anti-Western content to outlets in Serbia and Montenegro, according to a European Parliament report in July (http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/ATAG/2017/608627/EPRS_ATA(2017)608627_EN.pdf).

The Russian government-owned newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta has meanwhile been licensing its Russia Beyond publication for foreigners to the Balkans.

It is printed as a supplement called Ruska rec and distributed monthly with influential Serbian daily newspaper Politika, weekly magazine Nedeljnik and for almost a year with the Montenegrin daily Dan, the paper with the highest circulation in Montenegro.

Explaining the decision to publish Ruska rec in Montenegro, Dan’s editor-in-chief Nikola Markovic told BIRN and CIN-CG that the partnership project, in which the Moscow publishing company offers content and the Montenegrin paper is responsible for the printing and distribution, was initiated by the Russian side.

Rossiyskaya Gazeta also launched an edition of its Russia Beyond website in Serbian in 2016. In the past months, it has increased its coverage from Montenegro and has hired contributors. (https //rs.rbth.com/).

Yevgeny Abov, who is the deputy director of Rossiyskaya Gazeta, said in an interview with the Croatian daily Vecernji list in July that the project was launched to improve the “image of Russia in the world and in the Balkans”.

Research published in February by the US-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies entitled ‘Russian Information Operations in the Western Balkans’ (http://www.defenddemocracy.org/media-hit/john-cappello-russian-information-operations-in-the-western-balkans/), said the Russians “clearly identified an opportunity” when deciding to launch Serbian-language media from Belgrade.

Content from sources like Sputnik and Russia Beyond is republished on an almost daily basis by mainstream Serbian, Montenegrin and Bosnian Serb media outlets.

“The tone is strongly anti-NATO and anti-EU. And the veracity is often questionable, at best,” the Foundation for Defense of Democracies report said.

Another piece of research by the US-based Center for International Media Assistance in 2016, about Russia’s penetration of the media space, said that the number of media outlets registered locally in both Montenegro and Serbia was increasing, as was Russian-sponsored content in the local press. (http://www.cima.ned.org/blog/serbia-and-montenegro/)

“Media influenced by Russia contribute to a fragmented picture of the world in which news is tailored to Russian political and economic interests, and the people of Serbia and Montenegro are left with increasingly unreliable information,” the report said.

However some argue that Russian media have more impact when their stories are republished by local outlets, thus making their message appear more credible.

The US-based Bulgarian academic Dimitar Bechev (https://www.amazon.com/Rival-Power-Russia-Southeast-Europe/dp/030021913X) told BIRN and CIN-CG that in the Balkans, local media sometimes reproduce or recycle talking points from Russia on their own initiative, rather than taking direct orders from Moscow.

“Of course, there are Russian media outlets such Sputnik, but they are not as influential as the [local] pro-Russian ones,” Bechev said.

There is however Russian investment in Serbian-language versions of outlets like Sputnik, which shows that Moscow remains committed to promoting its worldview to what it hopes is a receptive audience in the Balkans.

But in Montenegro, which remains split over NATO and EU membership, the lead is being taken by local media that oppose the current government’s pro-Western policies and want the country to adopt a more Russia-friendly direction.

Russian-Language Papers Target Tourists

According to the official data from the Ministry of Culture, 15 printed media in the Russian language have been registered in Montenegro since 2006. The founders of a majority of those outlets are Russian citizens and their bases are in the resort of Budva.

These media do not deal with politics, but rather with issues related to the life of the Russian diaspora in the country. At the peak of the Russian business boom in Montenegro from 2008 to 2012, editions of the popular Russian newspapers Komsomolskaya Pravda and Argumenty i Facty were also printed in the country, but they were both closed down in 2015.

Russia-Montenegro Relations in Brief

Mainly Slavic in ethnicity and mainly Orthodox in religion, Montenegro has a long history of close relations with Moscow, dating back to the reign of Tsar Peter the Great.

Russia then took the small Orthodox principality under its protective wing. Moscow has repeatedly said that Montenegro’s ambitions to join NATO counter to centuries of ‘fraternal relations’ between the two nations.

According to Russian diaspora organisations, around 12,000 Russians are permanent residents in Montenegro. Russian nationals own almost 30 per cent of the foreign companies in the country, according to the MONSTAT state statistics bureau.

For years, Montenegro has been labelled the ‘Russian VIP resort’, the preferred destination of oligarchs.

Russians are still the most numerous foreign tourists in the country. Around 300,000 Russians visit the country each year, making more than a million overnight stays.

Some surveys suggest that more than 40 per cent of real estate in Montenegro now belongs to Russians, mainly to politicians and billionaires.

Russia has also for many years been the biggest single source of foreign direct investment. It accounts for nearly a third of foreign direct investment in Montenegro.

Promoting Slavic Brotherhood Online

Katehon, the website of Russian tycoon Konstantin Molofeev, has also added its voice to the online glorification of Slavic brotherhood. Run from Moscow, the site has translations of selected articles in Serbian and targets Serbs in Montenegro and Serbia.

Molofeev, a 42-year-old investment fund founder, has been described by Western media as having links to the Russian Church and Russian President Vladimir Putin. He has reportedly  developed strong ties with Montenegro and its pro-Russian opposition.

In September 2014, an international gathering in Moscow devoted to ‘traditional family values’ was sponsored by Malofeev, and hosted by the tycoon and Strahinja Bulajic, a Montenegrin MP from the opposition Democratic Front.

His TV Constantinople in Moscow has broadcast several interviews with the Front’s politicians, including one of its leaders Andrija Mandi.

Although banned from entering in Montenegro in 2015 for being on the list of Russian citizens who are under sanctions from the EU over the Crimea annexation, Molofeev financed a religious ceremony in April 2015 which involved fire being carried from Moscow to Cetinje’s Serbian Orthodox Church monastery.

Malofeev’s support won him a blessing from the Serbian metropolitan in Montenegro, Amfilohije.

The board of directors of his Katehon site includes Alexander Dugin, a hardline nationalist who believes Russia is the successor to the Byzantine Empire.