One year after parliamentary elections resulted in the defeat of the Democratic Party of Socialist (DPS) that has been ruling Montenegro for three decades, the Southeastern European nation remains divided over questions of national identity. The tiny Balkan country that is hoping to join the European Union by 2025 is facing ethnic and religious tensions.
Since 1992, Montenegro has been a republic in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, a member state in the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro from 2002 until 2006, and an independent country ever since. It is a multi-ethnic society split between those who consider themselves Montenegrins, those who identify as Serbs, and various other smaller groups. Citizens of Montenegro who identify as ethnic Serbs account for about a third of the country’s 630,000 population, according to the latest census data, while the majority of people living there are members of the Serbian Orthodox Church.
On September 5, Montenegrin nationalists and far-right groups staged protests against the enthronement of the new head of the Serbian Orthodox Church in the country. According to reports, riot police used tear gas and dispersed hundreds of demonstrators who gathered in the historic city of Cetinje where the new Metropolitan of Montenegro Joanikije was enthroned. The day before his inauguration, hundreds of protesters, led by the DPS leader and Montenegro’s President Milo Djukanovic, have set up barricades to block access to Cetinje. At the same time, thousands of ethnic Serbs have gathered in front of the Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ in the capital city of Podgorica to greet Metropolitan Joanikije and the Head of the Serbian Orthodox Church Patriarch Porfirije.
Traditionally, it is in Cetinje where the solemn ceremony of inauguration of the Montenegrin Metropolitan of the Serbian Orthodox Church takes place. Most protesters, on the other hand, belong to the canonically unrecognized Montenegrin Orthodox Church. Over the years, Djukanovic, who has been in power since 1990 – much longer than “Europe’s last dictator” Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus – had been eager to curb the Serbian Orthodox Church’s clout in Montenegro and build up an independent Orthodox church in the country.
“We need to protect our freedom and sovereignty”, said Djukanovic, who pushed Montenegro into NATO membership in 2017.
Although Montenegro’s President strongly backed the protesters who hoped to prevent the Serbian Orthodox Church leaders from entering into the Cetinje monastery, they arrived in front of the facility by what was believed to be a military helicopter. In other words, a helicopter of a NATO member state was used to transport allegedly Russia-backed Serbian clergy. Indeed, as soon as protests in and around Cetinje erupted, some pro-Western analysts and advocates accused Russia of trying to use the Serbian Orthodox Church as a tool for achieving its own geopolitical goals in the Balkan nation. Their Russian colleagues, on the other hand, compared the situation in Montenegro to Ukraine, where the Ukrainian Orthodox Church gained autocephaly in 2018 over the objections of the Kremlin and the Moscow Patriarchy. Ukrainian autocephaly should also be considered in the context of the Serbian Orthodox Church’s fears regarding the future status of the unrecognized Montenegrin Orthodox Church.
Over the past few years, Djukanovic has been calling for the creation of an autonomous branch of the Orthodox church in Montenegro, similar to the Ukraine church’s split from Russia. It was on his initiative that a controversial religious bill – that forced religious communities to provide a register of everything they own as well as evidence of ownership from before 1918 – was adopted in December 2019. The law effectively deprived the Serbian Orthodox Church of ownership of church buildings and estates, which provoked mass protests that lasted for several months. As a result, Djukanovic’s DPS lost the parliamentary elections in 2020, but the country never changed its pro-EU and pro-NATO geopolitical orientation, nor did it lift sanctions that the DPS government imposed on Russia over Moscow’s actions in Crimea and the Donbass in 2014.
It is worth noting that Russia was the first country to recognize Montenegro’s independence in 2006. Russian economic presence in the country has been growing ever since. Foreign direct investments from Russia to Montenegro represented around 30 percent of Montenegro’s GDP in 2016, while in 2019 Russia was the largest foreign investor in the country, with its total investment equaling 26 percent of the nation’s GDP. In addition, that year Russian tourists accounted for 29.1 percent of all overnight stays in Montenegro, in spite of sanctions that Podgorica imposed on Moscow. Moreover, in March 2021 a consortium of Italy’s multinational oil and gas company Eni and Russia’s second-largest natural gas producer Novatek announced its plans to start the first exploratory oil and gas drilling offshore Montenegro under a concession contract signed in 2016.
Given that Montenegro has been firmly in the Western geopolitical orbit at least since 2006, Russian economic actions in the Balkan nation are likely part of a wider geopolitical deal between the Kremlin and its “dear Western partners”. Ethno-religious tensions in the Balkan country could be interpreted in the context of another political performance whose goal is to distract the population from the growing socio-economic problems. Indeed, divide and rule tactics always work.
Image credit: Jocelyn Erskine-Kellie