Beachside playground of shady oligarchs recast as pawn in Russian power play

With an overall population no bigger than that of a medium-sized European city and occupying just a sliver of territory, Montenegro should be of little interest to a power such as Russia. But the tiny Balkan state that disappeared from the maps in 1918 and only narrowly voted to regain its independence in 2006 has now reverted to a role for which it was famous throughout the 19th century: that of a pawn, used by Russia in its broader strategic confrontation with the West.

For more than a decade, Russian oligarchs have parked their ill-gotten cash and peroxide blonde girlfriends in Montenegro, attracted by the country’s scenic beauty and stunning coastline, lavish casinos with plenty of money-laundering opportunities and the absence of any currency risk: Montenegro uses the euro as its legal tender.

But behind these transactions lurked a bigger strategic objective: that of using Montenegro as an outpost of Russian influence. For, contrary to most of the current worries among military planners in the West who fear a Russian provocation on Nato’s northern flank around the Baltic states, it is actually on Nato’s southern flank, in the Balkans, that Russia has made most advances. Everything, from the war against Georgia in 2008 to the invasion of Ukraine in 2014 and the Russian military intervention in Syria, has taken place around the Balkans, with Montenegro and neighbouring Serbia often acting as Moscow’s staging posts.

Russia explored the possibility of establishing a naval base on Montenegro’s shoreline, the only bit of the Adriatic Sea coast not currently controlled by a Nato member state. Had it succeeded in gaining such a concession, the Russian navy would have been able to monitor a great deal of Nato’s activities in the area and intercept much of its communications. The establishment of a naval base in Montenegro would have also provided justification for subsequent logistical bases in the country and elsewhere in the Balkans.

And all would have been consistent with President Vladimir Putin’s objective of sidelining Nato and regaining Russia’s role as a decisionmaker in European security.

Having failed to obtain a foothold, Russia expended considerable efforts on preventing Montenegro from becoming a Nato member state, calculating – correctly – that if it succeeds in this objective it would effectively obtain a veto over the alliance’s future enlargements and strategic plans in south-eastern Europe.

That is why the confrontation between Russia and Nato over what would otherwise not be a significant

‘A Russian naval base in Montenegro would have allowed it to monitor a great deal of Nato’s activity in the area’

country remains so important.

Ironically, the Russians could have succeeded in their quest of preventing Montenegro’s Nato membership by simply being co-operative with the West: for years, Germany blocked Montenegro’s membership application precisely because the Germans feared that this would annoy Russia and argued that everything must be done to maintain Russian co-operation.

But as Mr Putin continued in his policy of confrontation with the West, Germany was reluctantly forced to accept that there was no longer any reason to stop Montenegro from joining the alliance.

The fact that none of this deters Mr Putin and his security services from treating Montenegro as, effectively, a Russian province in which leaders are deposed at will indicates that Russia’s hostility to the West is now unrelenting and unremitting. And it will pay no heed to the sovereignty of a small Balkan state.