Russia, an alleged coup, and Montenegro’s bid for NATO membership

Testifying before a congressional committee, FBI Director James Comey has confirmed that his agency is investigating links between the Donald Trump campaign and Russia.

While this investigation continues, Americans should be reminded of the signs of Russian interference in democratic processes outside the United States – specifically, in the Balkans.

Small but strategic
Recently, British Prime Minister Theresa May expressed concern over Moscow’s apparent involvement in an attempted coup in my home country.

From 2010 to 2015, I was the ambassador to NATO from Montenegro, a young democracy in southeast Europe that is part of the former Yugoslavia. Montenegro was targeted by an apparent coup attempt during its last parliamentary election on 16 October 2016. While Russia has denied involvement, details of the plot shared by a Serbian man arrested at the scene point to what the New York Times called “Russian efforts to sow mayhem.”

Montenegro’s chief special prosecutor has alleged the involvement of two Russian Military Intelligence Service (GRU) agents, Vladimir Popov and Eduard Shirokov. The GRU is the same organization sanctioned by the Obama administration for hacking the Democratic National Committee offices. Shirolov, who has also gone by the name Shishmakov, was posted as the assistant military attache at the Russian Embassy in Poland until 2014 – when Poland threw him out of the country for spying.

As some of the plotters later confessed, their goal was to overthrow Montenegro’s government, kill then-Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic and put into power political groups that oppose Montenegro’s NATO membership. Russia is on the record as opposing that membership bid and promised “retaliatory actions.”

Despite Russian opposition, joining NATO is one of Montenegro’s major foreign policy goals. The overwhelming majority of NATO members, 26 states, have already ratified the country’s membership and the process seemed on track for completion at the next NATO summit in May of 2017.

However, the addition of new members to the alliance requires unanimous support, and Spain and the U.S. still haven’t passed ratification.

In the United States, the proposal has been stalled in the Senate for several months. The vote recently sparked a nasty exchange between senators John McCain and Rand Paul when McCain attempted to call a vote on the issue, but Paul – who, along with Mike Lee may be the only senators opposed to the ratification – used Senate rules to delay it.