Montenegro threatened by Russia with missiles

Nationalist parliamentarian says Montenegro risks turning itself into a legitimate military target for Russia, if it joins NATO.

A nationalist deputy in the Russian Duma, Mikhail Degtyarev (image above), has warned Montenegro not to join NATO, saying the country could potentially be targeted by Russian missiles.

A Podgorica-based website, IN4S, quoted the member of the Liberal Democrat Party as saying that Montenegro would become “a legitimate target of Russian missiles” if it joined the alliance.

Degtyarev also described Montenegro’s support for Western sanctions against Russia, on account of Moscow’s role in the Ukrainian crisis, as “disgraceful”. He also said that Russia should work with China to establish “a military-political alliance” to counter US domination.

Montenegro was recently the target of harsh criticism from representatives of Russia. Before the crisis in Ukraine flared up, the Russian ambassador to Serbia, Aleksandr Chepurin, said of Montenegro's pro-Western orientation, that there were “monkeys in politics, like everywhere else”. 

Moscow was especially angered by the recent visit to Washington of Montenegrin Prime Minister Milo Đukanović, where he sought support for his country's NATO membership bid and backed the alliance “boldly going into further expansion of the Euro-Atlantic zone of stability, especially in the Balkans”. 

Political commentators in Montenegro have compared recent Russian messages to the days of the Cominform, when the former Soviet Union openly threatened Yugoslavia, of which Montenegro was once part, with military intervention.