Montenegro’s public expects the President, who holds special political legitimacy, and the President of the Supreme Court to speak out and take concrete steps, initiating political and professional actions to prevent the escalation of lawlessness encouraged and protected by Andrija Mandić, Aleksa Bečić, the prosecution, and some judges assigned to try political prisoners.
Milorad Popović, President of the Montenegrin Society of Independent Writers and recipient of the Njegoš Award, has addressed an open letter to the President of Montenegro, the President of the Supreme Court, and the EU Commissioner for Enlargement. In his letter, he highlights the pivotal role played by Chief Special Prosecutor Milivoje Katnić in 2016, when he successfully thwarted a plot by the Russian military intelligence service (GRU). This conspiracy involved leaders from the Democratic Front and Serbian paramilitary and police “war dogs,” who intended to execute an armed coup in Montenegro.
Popović reminds readers that Katnić, now charged and arrested as a member of a criminal organization, and Andrija Mandić, one of the alleged conspirators, currently serves as President of the Montenegrin Parliament. In his appeal, Popović urges Jakov Milatović, Valentina Pavličić, and Marta Kos to ensure that Milivoje Katnić, who is seriously ill, receives appropriate medical treatment in accordance with democratic principles upheld by modern European societies. He emphasizes that saving Katnić’s life would also help ease internal tensions within Montenegrin society.
We share Popović’s open letter in full:
Dear,
The Montenegrin regime, embodied by Andrija Mandić, alongside the Russian and Belarusian governments, stands alone in Europe in persecuting and imprisoning political opponents. The regime in Podgorica systematically discriminates against, politically demonizes, and prosecutes intellectuals, writers, and journalists who resist the Greater Serbian ideology, that is, the suppression of universal human rights and freedoms. This Greater Serbian regime is even harsher toward officials from the sovereignist government who held key positions between 1997 and 2020 in security, judiciary, education, economy, and anti-corruption efforts.
The strategic goal behind criminalizing these failed sovereignist officials is less about discrediting individuals and more about demonizing the very idea of a sovereign Montenegro. The national and political character of both society and the state is being reshaped: obstructing European integration, preparing amendments to the Citizenship Law and the Constitution of Montenegro, abandoning NATO, which is intended as the final step toward Montenegro’s annexation by Serbia, and returning to a pan-Orthodox union stretching from the Adriatic to Japan.
The Milivoje Katnić affair, more than any other wrongdoing, reveals the spirit, ideological-national character, and dangerous intentions of the current regime. It also exposes the ruthless Stalinist methods used to mentally and physically torment this sixty-eight-year-old retiree. Beyond political motives, revenge also plays a role in Katnić’s arrest and the unreasonable length of his detention. In 2016, as chief special prosecutor, Katnić played a crucial role in thwarting a plan by the Russian military intelligence service GRU, which, with help from leaders of the Democratic Front and Serbian paramilitary and police “war dogs”, intended to carry out an armed coup and spark a civil war that would permanently undermine Montenegro’s independence. Thanks to a fortunate turn of events and his prior experience in military-security sectors, Katnić disrupted Moscow and Belgrade’s plans, delaying their ultimate goal of gaining access to warm seas, right in the middle of NATO’s maritime zone stretching from Portugal to Syria, by at least a decade.
It is telling that Milivoje Katnić is now charged and detained as a member of a criminal organization, while Andrija Mandić, one of the alleged conspirators, currently serves as President of the Montenegrin Parliament and remains the country’s most powerful politician. Moreover, this arrogant criminal police-judiciary clique didn’t even bother to construct a remotely coherent indictment. (Anyone familiar with the show trials engineered by prosecutor Andrey Vyshinsky in the late 1930s would recognize that Stalin’s enforcers brought more expertise and credibility to accusing “anti-communist conspirators and foreign spies” than the prosecutorial trio of Milorad Marković, Vladimir Novović, and Miloš Šoškić did in their indictment against Katnić and other officials. According to their charges, Katnić is supposedly part of the Kavač criminal cartel, even though he personally arrested forty-three of its members!)
At the June 19, 2025 hearing, Milivoje Katnić thoroughly exposed the criminal background of the joint prosecutor-judiciary-police cartel. Out of 1.2 million intercepted phone calls from the criminal group, provided by foreign intelligence agencies to the Montenegrin prosecution, prosecutor Miloš Šoškić selectively used only those parts of Sky app conversations that could indirectly link Katnić to the Kavač clan, taking them out of context. Katnić’s lawyers, upon closer examination, uncovered scandalous facts: the special prosecutors deleted sections of conversations among drug lords that clearly showed Katnić was not a member, accomplice, or ally of the criminal clan, in fact, Radoje Zvicer and his associates considered him their main enemy within the police and prosecution leadership. Furthermore, the drug lords were plotting Katnić’s assassination and even the murder of his son!
Analyzing the Katnić affair, which will be discussed and written about for decades, as it touches on many internal Montenegrin controversies, the Montenegro-Serbia relationship, and the broader West-Russia context, one inevitably encounters numerous contradictions and absurdities. For example, in today’s internet and social media era, when even average media consumers can learn about scandals and atrocities worldwide, there is an almost conspiratorial silence surrounding the Katnić affair, not only in Montenegro but also across regional and European circles. The silence of political parties, countless human rights NGOs, and the apparent disinterest of diplomatic representatives from EU and NATO countries is at best puzzling.
From a broader socio-political and ideological perspective, it would not be difficult to demonstrate that the Katnić affair is driven by an unusual hybrid of internal fear and disorientation among the sovereignist public, combined with bureaucratic complacency and opportunism among external actors. The ignorance of foreign diplomatic and political centers is particularly surprising given the credibility of the 2016 attempted coup in Montenegro, which, contrary to common belief, took place not ninety but nine years ago and was later confirmed by figures such as Aleksandar Vučić, Boris Johnson, and Mike Pence.
Milivoje Katnić has been in custody for fifteen months, and for most of this time, in protest against his unjust imprisonment and the outrageous accusations leveled by the police-judiciary clique, he has been on a full or partial hunger strike (after an initial classic hunger strike, he has survived in recent months on yogurt alone!). In the meantime, he has lost forty kilograms, and his health is so severely compromised that without constant medical supervision and proper care, he could die at any moment.
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Dear,
Since the fall of communism, there has never been a clearer example of Montenegro’s profound moral and civilizational decline, and its cynical disregard for human rights, than in the Katnić Affair. In any European country, perhaps except Belarus, Milivoje Katnić would be hailed as a national hero after everything that has transpired. This affair is directly or indirectly tied to the state of democracy and political processes in Montenegro, inevitably shaping the character and future of Montenegrin society, as well as the survival of the nation and state. History teaches us that small nations, challenged from within and without, cannot survive if they lose mutual solidarity, self-confidence, fighting spirit, and strategic allies.
In many ways, the Katnić Affair echoes the political backdrop of the infamous Dreyfus Affair in late 19th-century France. Back then, parts of the French regime framed Captain Alfred Dreyfus, because of his Jewish heritage, for espionage on behalf of Germany. Numerous intellectuals, political and labor activists, including the great French writer Émile Zola, rose in his defense.
However, given today’s political and social climate, the human rights situation, and the timing of Milivoje Katnić’s persecution, his arrest and mistreatment resemble more closely the case of Alexei Navalny. Montenegro today resembles Putin’s Russia far more than France under President Félix Faure. Notably, the Dreyfus Affair ended with a happy conclusion: following his acquittal, Dreyfus was morally and politically rehabilitated, awarded the Legion of Honor, and promoted to lieutenant colonel. Considering the climate of fear under the Mandić-Novović regime, the indifference and short-term pragmatism of Western countries, and Katnić’s critical health condition, it is sadly more likely that he may suffer the same fate as Navalny, who died in a Putin-controlled prison due to inadequate or delayed medical care.
Despite the obvious differences in scale and power between Russia and Montenegro’s repressive and propaganda apparatus, there are many ideological and political parallels, fascinations and delusions, between Putin’s regime and the hybrid regime in Podgorica, epitomized by Andrija Mandić. Putin’s empire and Montenegro’s bantustan, along with all regimes and ideologies preaching one-party thinking and constantly hunting for enemies, share a ruthless disregard for human rights and the value of human life itself. (The key difference is that Russian security services control organized crime, whereas in Podgorica, the situation resembles more closely Colombia, Bolivia, or Mexico.)
What unites small and great autocrats, whether messianic or simply power-hungry, is the fatal belief that their rule will last forever, that fate will spare them the destiny of previous tyrants and dictators. This delusion also grips the leaders of Montenegro’s security services, police, prosecution, and judiciary, who suddenly, without particular merit, have been empowered to decide people’s fates, even life and death.
It is striking that none have questioned why, in a small country where almost everyone knows each other, all legal and human codes are so brutally violated: demonizing opposition writers and journalists, ordering pre-trial detention, prosecuting Katnić, Čađenović, Perović, Rajković, Vukotić, Maraš, Jovanić, and others, while ignoring serious indications and direct evidence of crimes involving Andrija Mandić, Aleksa Bečić, Dritan Abazović, and other officials of the “August 30th regime.” Why were selectively intercepted criminal conversations used as grounds to arrest Katnić, yet messages on the Sky app revealing how criminal clans bought votes for the political party of the current Deputy Prime Minister in charge of security do not even warrant a formal investigation? Has Novović ever been asked why he failed to act on information from foreign embassies about Mandić’s ties to criminal clans? How is it possible that in a European NATO candidate country the Speaker of Parliament has private security, like Pancho Villa? Or that an unofficial figure close to the Speaker’s relative could fire at citizens from an official parliamentary car? How do witnesses to this assassination attempt disappear, and prosecutors downgrade the charge from attempted murder to “endangering public safety”?
These are just a few examples illustrating the tragic state of Montenegro’s judiciary and police, reflecting a broader societal and political collapse caused by the monstrous symbiosis of official authorities, the Serbian Orthodox Church, paramilitary groups, and criminal networks. Since the so-called Moleban Revolution at the end of 2019, it is unclear who commands whom, or who blackmails whom. Unless this irregular state changes quickly, it will escalate into a full-scale social catastrophe: after political opponents’ arrests, chaos on the streets stirred by organized crime, and public beatings of political rivals, political murders are inevitable.
The facts speak for themselves: since early 2025, 25 people have been killed in criminal clashes in Montenegro. In Cetinje, a town of barely 10,000 residents, 31 people, including four children, have been shot dead in just over two years. This death toll surpasses casualties in similarly sized cities in Bosnia, Croatia, or even Ukraine during wartime.
Montenegro’s public expects the President, who holds special political legitimacy, and the President of the Supreme Court to speak out and take concrete steps, initiating political and professional actions to prevent the escalation of lawlessness encouraged and protected by Andrija Mandić, Aleksa Bečić, the prosecution, and some judges assigned to try political prisoners. If no resistance to this lawlessness arises within the formally three-branch government, and if the opposition lacks the courage to personally and credibly expose the architects of legal destruction, society will sink deeper into chaos. Likewise, democratic citizens expect diplomatic representatives of democratic countries in Montenegro, especially the European Commissioner for Enlargement, to responsibly highlight anti-European and anti-democratic trends here, without petty political calculations. Were democratic countries more responsible about selective law enforcement, political trials, clerical fascism, and discrimination against certain political and ethnic groups in Montenegro, EU ministers would not be praising Vladimir Novović for “successful anti-corruption work”.
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Dear,
In the interest of safeguarding democracy, civil peace, and Montenegro’s sovereignty, a more active stance on the persecution, punishment, and endangerment of Milivoje Katnić’s life could restore trust and encourage democratic citizens who are losing hope that Montenegro will gradually emerge from the legacy of autocracy, clerical and ethno-nationalist ideology, and chauvinism. This is not just about the fate of the former chief special prosecutor but about all citizens opposing the terror of the clerical-fascist regime. Mandić, Bečić, Marković, Novović, and others in the state’s repressive-propaganda apparatus demonstrate through Katnić’s arrest and potential elimination that fear and lawlessness are the most effective tools to achieve certain goals in weak, divided, and undemocratic societies.
If Montenegro were not a “small Belarus” in the Balkans, the political opposition would have used the Katnić Affair to expose the regime’s anti-democratic face, calling for mass protests, filing motions with international institutions, holding press conferences in Brussels and other European capitals. Domestic human rights organizations would organize continuous civil resistance via social media campaigns, statements, and symposia inviting legal experts and renowned human rights defenders. Engaged independent intellectuals would address domestic and foreign political and human rights institutions more frequently, uncompromisingly, and with greater focus on core issues.
Montenegrin society is sinking into deeper pathology typical of hybrid post-communist and post-fascist societies. Criticism of the local clerical-fascist regime remains mostly general, limited to condemning identity and economic policies, incompetence, abuses, and greed of those in power. Yet, out of fear of the Balkan underworld centers of power, people hesitate to expose the political and criminal conspiracy directly. The terror inspired by the cartels of Mandić and Novović, their allies and subordinates, is destroying democratic institutions and shaping a political mentality typical of authoritarian regimes. A recent example from Podgorica’s political-diplomatic circles illustrates this:
After New Year 2025, diplomats, politicians, and journalists circulated rumors about which local media would first publish information from a Western embassy to the Special Prosecutor’s Office regarding Mandić’s criminal links and the refusal to investigate the Speaker of Parliament. Eventually, a regional TV station broke the news with little public reaction. Only then did local media dare to question Vladimir Novović about these rumors. Whether the Special Prosecutor ever responded remains unknown.
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Dear,
Milivoje Katnić, like Alexei Navalny, is already sentenced to die in his prison cell. Therefore, I expect you, with your authority and professional competence, to intervene and prevent his physical execution. In line with democratic and humanitarian principles, please ensure that the former chief special prosecutor receives hospital or home treatment until the first-instance verdict by the Higher Court in Podgorica, in accordance with regulations applied to other suspects defending themselves from freedom. There is no theoretical chance that a seriously ill 68-year-old man, who did not flee Montenegro before his arrest, when he was in much better health, would evade facing trial again.
If you act to provide adequate care and save Katnić’s life, you will perform a humane act and help reduce internal tensions in Montenegrin society. His death in prison would deepen frustrations, embolden his persecutors, and cause new ideological and political rifts that will destructively affect Montenegro’s political future, especially within the largest ethnic community, which is already divided on identity and politics.
The destructive Greater Serbian ideology in Montenegro will endure only as long as international indifference and apathy toward Montenegro’s internal situation persist, or as long as the puppet regime can continue to instill fear and systematically discriminate against citizens who believed that in 2006 they finally had a historic chance to become an organic, inseparable part of the Euro-Atlantic civilization.
Respectfully,
Milorad Popović
President of the Montenegrin Society of Independent Writers
Njegoš Award Laureate
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