Written by: Aleksandar Radoman, Adnan Čirgić, Boban Batrićević, Đorđe Šćepović
Amid the daily deluge of scandals unleashed by Montenegro’s current puppet regime, yet another, this time international, provocation has slipped by almost unnoticed. The Ministry of Defense, led by Dragan Krapović and controlled by the Democrats, has rejected an official invitation from the Republic of Croatia to send a military delegation to the commemoration of the 30th anniversary of Operation Storm. Why does this constitute a serious international scandal?
1. NATO Membership and Historical Responsibility
Montenegro is now a member of NATO, the most powerful military and security alliance in the world. This membership places it alongside Croatia not only as a strategic partner but as a formal ally, bound by mutual defense commitments and a shared set of principles and values. Among those principles is the inviolability of national borders and the collective duty of all NATO members to respond to external aggression against any of their allies.
Had Montenegro and Croatia both been NATO members in 1991, Montenegro would have been obligated to defend Croatia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, nearly one-third of which was under occupation at the time by the Yugoslav People’s Army, in gross violation of both international law and the Constitution of the disintegrating Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY). Tragically, Montenegro was not a neutral bystander. On the contrary, it played a deeply shameful role in that aggression, lending legitimacy to Milošević’s criminal agenda and actively participating in the attack on Dubrovnik, an operation carried out in large part by units mobilized in Montenegro.
Given that legacy, contemporary Montenegro should be especially attuned to the suffering of those who were victims of that aggression. It should be unequivocal in its rejection of the propaganda narratives of the Milošević regime. And yet today, elements of the Montenegrin government, most notably the Democrats, are actively working to rehabilitate that regime’s legacy. Through historical revisionism, through proposals to name streets after war criminals like Pavle Bulatović, through obsequiousness toward promoters of Greater Serbian nationalism, and through gestures that, in Croatia, can only be seen as hostile, such as the so-called Resolution on Jasenovac, they are reviving the very ideologies that once plunged the region into bloodshed.
When the Democrats rail against the “former regime”, they refer only to the years between 1997 and 2020. But the truly darkest period in modern Montenegrin history was from 1990 to 1997, when the country was ruled from Slobodan Milošević’s living room. It was a time of war, of street-level criminality, economic collapse, and the spread of neo-fascist ideology. That is the era the Democrats are nostalgic for. That is the era they are trying to resurrect, and in many ways, they are succeeding.
Once again, Montenegro is taking its political cues from Belgrade’s autocratic elite. Once again, newspaper crime sections read like chronicles of Democratic Party “successes”. Once again, the economy is being systematically dismantled. And once again, the virus of neo-fascism threatens to infect Montenegrin society.
2. The Nature of the Aggression Against Croatia
In 1991, the Yugoslav People’s Army, having come under the de facto control of Slobodan Milošević, launched a campaign of military aggression that seized nearly one-third of Croatia’s internationally recognized territory. Cities such as Vukovar and Dubrovnik were razed. According to the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), approximately 220,000 Croatian citizens of non-Serb ethnicity were expelled from the occupied regions of Northern Dalmatia, Lika, Banija, Kordun, Slavonia, and Baranja.
In August 1991, under the auspices of the Council of Ministers of the European Economic Community, the Arbitration Commission of the Peace Conference on Yugoslavia was established. Known as the Badinter Commission, named for its chair, Robert Badinter, then President of the Constitutional Council of France, the body was tasked with resolving legal disputes arising from the breakup of the SFRY.
By the end of November 1991, the Badinter Commission had concluded that the SFRY was in the process of dissolution. In its subsequent opinions, it affirmed that the borders of the republics could not be altered without mutual agreement, thereby legitimizing the independence of the former republics within their existing boundaries. On January 15, 1992, all EU member states recognized Croatia’s independence. On May 22, 1992, Croatia’s flag was raised outside the United Nations headquarters in New York.
Meanwhile, the so-called Republic of Serbian Krajina, a puppet entity created by Milošević on Croatian territory, descended into criminality. Its first two leaders, Milan Babić and Milan Martić, were convicted by the ICTY of war crimes committed as part of a joint criminal enterprise aimed at creating a unified Serbian state by violently expelling non-Serbs. The third president of Krajina, Goran Hadžić, died during his trial.
There is no longer any doubt that this pseudo-state, which existed for more than three years on one-third of Croatian territory, was installed, armed, and financed by Belgrade. Officers of the Serbian Army of Krajina were paid through a special budgetary channel of the Yugoslav Army. Moreover, Serbia’s State Security Service played a central role, as established by the verdicts of the UN Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals against Jovica Stanišić and Franko Simatović. These men, the architects of the “Red Berets,” a paramilitary formation that operated under different names and local commanders, were key players in the wars in both Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
3. Operation Storm: Restoration of Sovereignty
Operation Storm was a legitimate military operation through which the internationally recognized Republic of Croatia restored control over its occupied territory. The offensive came only after all peaceful avenues had been exhausted. Notably, the leadership of the so-called Republic of Serbian Krajina had rejected the Z-4 Plan, which would have granted extraordinary autonomy to the Serbian minority in Croatia.
Croatia now rightly commemorates Operation Storm as a decisive moment in the restoration of its sovereignty over Dalmatia, Lika, Kordun, and Banija, and as a precursor to the peaceful reintegration of Baranja and Eastern Slavonia. Three and a half years after its international recognition, Croatia had affirmed its territorial integrity within its legally recognized borders.
The operation also had major implications for Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Bihać enclave, under siege by the forces of Krajina and Republika Srpska since the spring of 1992, was finally relieved in August 1995. Tragically, General Izet Nanić, the legendary commander who had heroically led the defense of Bihać, was killed during the offensive.
While the military and political legitimacy of Operation Storm is no longer in question, its humanitarian consequences remain a subject of debate. It is an indisputable fact that a majority of the Serbian population fled during the operation. According to UN estimates, between 150,000 and 200,000 people were displaced. But it is equally true that Milan Martić, the so-called president of Serbian Krajina and a convicted war criminal, issued an official evacuation order on August 4, 1995, at 4:45 PM, setting the humanitarian catastrophe in motion.
In its 2012 ruling, the ICTY acquitted Croatian generals Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markač, finding that Operation Storm did not constitute an organized campaign of ethnic cleansing. Crimes committed during and after the operation have been investigated and prosecuted through the Croatian judiciary. As of 2012, some 2,380 individuals had been convicted of crimes ranging from looting and arson to murder and war crimes. Nevertheless, much work remains, particularly in locating the missing and prosecuting unresolved cases.
If Montenegro is truly committed to meeting the EU accession standards, then confronting its role in the 1990s is not just advisable, but essential. That means openly acknowledging, and unambiguously condemning, the state’s shameful actions during the early years of the Yugoslav wars.
Yet the current regime, cloaked in empty pro-European slogans, is moving in the opposite direction. It is engaged in a campaign of historical revisionism, relativizing war crimes, and elevating war criminals to the status of national heroes.
The most insidious role in this campaign is played by the political heirs of Slobodan Milošević, now regrouped under the banner of the Democrats. And it is through this lens that we must understand Dragan Krapović’s decision: instead of building constructive, neighborly, and partnership-based relations with the Republic of Croatia, he chose provocation. He chose silence. And in doing so, he revealed the true agenda behind the Democrats' façade, not a commitment to European values, but a return to the darkest impulses of the region’s past.
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