Pokret za Promjene

        What is the common thread connecting Milo Djukanovic, the former prime minister of Montenegro and leader of its ruling party, with Tomislav Nikolic, president of the nationalist Serbian Progressive Party, and Milorad Dodik, obstructionist leader of the Serb half of Bosnia and Herzegovina?

The answer might surprise you, bridging as it does all the publicly declared ideological and political differences among these three politicians and their respective political parties. The common thread is Vladimir Putin, or to be precise, his political party United Russia.

 

Koca Pavlovic, member of the Montenegrin parliament for the Movement for Changes. 

 

Nikolic’s party, along with Djukanovic’s Democratic Party of Socialists and Dodik’s Alliance of Independent Social Democrats, signed cooperation agreements with United Russia this fall that signal a new Russian approach to the Balkans. Russia’s assertive new Balkan policy exploits an opportunity presented by the EU’s firm decision to cleanse the region of the plague of organized crime before accepting its individual states as new members.

These three political parties look to Putin to help them solve their political and economic, as well as security-related problems. More importantly, they are betting that with United Russia’s help they can both preserve power they already hold and gain power they crave. That is why Nikolic is talking about Russian investments worth billions of euros.

Case in point: An October meeting of a joint Montenegrin-Russian economic development committee, chaired by Montenegro’s foreign minister, Milan Rocen, and attended by the Russian emergency minister, Sergei Shoigu, resulted in a plan to turn over the Podgorica Aluminum Plant, an engine of the country’s economy, to Russian control. Companies owned by metals tycoon Oleg Deripaska already control 65 percent of the plant’s shares, the Montenegrin government the remainder.

Rocen and Shoigu also announced a massive wave of Russian investments into the few Montenegrin businesses and resources that are still controlled by the state.

Russian firms are bidding for contracts to build dams and a power plant and to exploit significant oil and gas reserves under the seabed off the Montenegrin coast near Ulcinj and coal reserves near the town of Pljevlja. Insiders argue that awarding this and other contracts to Russian companies is all but a done deal. Meanwhile, Milorad Dodik rejects pre-accession funds from the EU for the promise of massive Russian investments in Bosnia’s Republika Srpska.

For the Balkan signatories to this pact with Putin the goal is quite clear even though each might have his specific wish list. Some, perhaps with an eye to the recent arrest on corruption charges of Ivo Sanader, Croatia’s former prime minister, seek to avoid the “sanaderization” of their political and economic domains. Others work to distance Montenegro, Serbia, and Republika Srpska from European and Euro-Atlantic integration as much as possible, even to halt those processes altogether. 

Even though Moscow’s champions of the Eurasian union insist, officially, that it is not an alternative to the EU, their Balkan interlocutors seem to have other ideas. Perhaps that is why, according to the independent Vijesti newspaper, Djukanovic referred to “the obscure EU” during a recent infamous “secret dinner”  with influential public figures in Podgorica, where he outlined the parameters of Montenegro’s new foreign policy. 

Clearly, the recent acceleration of EU integration processes in the region and Brussels’ insistence that the Balkan countries meet head-on the challenges posed by corruption and organized crime, has ruffled some feathers. What for the Balkan states has been a decades-long promise of “becoming” a part of Europe is becoming a practical matter. Local politicians and their governments are now faced with addressing specific and difficult issues and fulfilling concrete obligations. It is unclear to what extent political leaders are willing to jeopardize their comfortable situations by implementing specific EU requirements. It remains to be seen if the Balkan black box will finally open up. 

As long as the task of implementing EU reforms and the idea of NATO membership were distant possibilities, Russia generously supported Montenegro’s European aspirations. The Kremlin was even understanding of our “Atlantic” aspirations. Back then, Rocen, the foreign minister, was working hard on connecting East and West, navigating the Montenegrin ship of state under the Russian flag in a challenging EU regatta.

This idyll was partially lost when neighboring Croatia got its foot in the EU door. But once Stefan Fule, the enlargement commissioner, stated in Podgorica that Europe would embrace the Balkans after it cleans up the crime and corruption, things in Montenegro changed dramatically. It became clear that the long-standing illusionist act by Djukanovic and Rocen had come to an end, and the time of empty European rhetoric had passed. The new EU approach to the region, with “sanaderization” as its essential element, made the Montenegrin regime turn toward the anti-reform-oriented Eurasian model. 

The current political landscape of the region is clearly marked by a Russian chalk circle that is being constantly retraced by interests who seek shelter under the Russian umbrella. Sadly, there is nothing unusual about this. These interests are, in essence, highly corrupt structures that share a common anti-reformist goal and a resentment of Western democracy. Furthermore, this Russian chalk circle in the Balkans is made up, almost exclusively, of wartime politicians. It is worth noting that the ongoing meltdown of the long-dominant Croatian Democratic Union, Sanader’s party, shows that EU membership also spells the end of wartime political elites. 

It is, therefore, only natural that a representative of the Montenegrin Embassy in Serbia would attend a gathering of Nikolic’s political supporters in Nis. Djukanovic’s and Rocen’s rhetoric of Europeanness is, in essence, identical to that of Nikolic’s and Dodik’s. It is also perfectly logical that the gathering was addressed by Russia’s ambassador to Serbia. After all, the meeting in Nis was as much an outing of Russian protégés as a public manifestation of a new Eurasian alliance.

We have entered the final phase of the process, when the wartime political leaders are feeling the heat of the upcoming moves toward European integration. The best measure of their anxiety is the feverish hate speech by Montenegro’s top political boss that followed the secret dinner in Podgorica. According to Vijesti, while addressing party members in Podgorica on 29 October, Djukanovic referred to his critics as “enemies of the state from the opposition parties,” and called an opposition member of parliament and a prominent critic of his policies a “drug addict.”

He is again resorting to well-known language of the 1990s and to lies concocted by the state security services. By doing so he is attempting to shift the focus from necessary pro-European reforms to a retrograde Balkan hate speech, since that is precisely where he and his police apparatus feel like fish in water. The absurdity of Montenegro’s situation lies in the fact that its most powerful politician – whose credo could be summed up nicely by some graffiti that famously appeared in downtown Podgorica, “Those who study will acquire knowledge and those who steal will acquire wealth” – is now calling for a national moral revival.

I expect the EU leaders, when they meet in December, to agree to open accession talks with Podgorica. I also expect the European Commission to speed up the process so that Montenegro could start its EU bidding as soon as possible. 

I have no doubt that when the arrests of prominent crime figures start in Montenegro, spurred on by Brussels, a split within the Democratic Party of Socialists will immediately follow. Unlike the Croatian Democratic Union, Djukanovic’s party has no ability to adapt to new circumstances and is considerably more rigid; it could not survive intact the arrests of any of its major figures. Because of this rigidity Montenegro’s “sanaderization” will likely develop and run its course much faster than Croatia’s did.

This is the broader framework within which we should interpret the occasional clashes between Djukanovic, Rocen, and the chairman of the Montenegrin parliament, Ranko Krivokapic, on one side, and the vice presidents of Djukanovic’s party on the other. They are trying to position themselves before the inevitable split. Inevitable because, for the first time, the West has decided to help it along.