Montenegro to Join NATO Missions on Russian Border
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| Montenegro’s Army. Photo: Montenegrin Defence Ministry. |
Montenegro will deploy troops in Poland and Latvia by 2019 at the latest in support of NATO battle formations on the border with Russia, according to a Defence Ministry document, which BIRN has obtained.
It said Montenegro will send troops to Latvia to join the Slovenian Army unit which has been there since 2017, with Canada as the lead country in the operation.
By the beginning of 2019, Montenegro will also send two logistics officers to join the NATO Battle Group in Poland.
According to the document, Montenegrin officers will be part of a unit deployed by the National Guard of the US State of Maine, which has been in partnership with Montenegro since 2007.
Both the Latvia and Poland operations were set up as a part of NATO’s efforts to tighten its presence on the alliance’s eastern borders with Russia.
NATO has four multinational battlegroups in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland totalling approximately 4,500 troops, operational since 2017.
Allied leaders decided at the Warsaw Summit in 2016 to enhance NATO’s military presence in the eastern sector of the alliance, the so-called the Eastern Flank, in response to a “changed security environment” following the eruption of conflict in Ukraine.
NATO said the four battlegroups were one of its responses to “Russia’s use of force against its neighbours and its military build-up in the Baltic region and beyond”.
Canada leads the battlegroup in Latvia, with contributions by Albania, Italy, Poland, Slovenia and Spain. The US leads the battlegroup in Poland, with contributions by Romania and the UK.
According to BIRN’s sources from the Defence Ministry, the plan to join NATO troops in Latvia and Poland will be presented at a meeting of Montenegro’s Defence Minister, Predrag Boskovic, and the US Defence Secretary, James Mattis, in Zagreb, Croatia, on July 13.
Mattis is coming to Croatia on his first official visit to the region. He will chair the meeting of the US-Adriatic Chapter, a regional initiative launched by Croatia, Albania, Macedonia and the US in and joined by Bosnia and Montenegro in 2008.
The aim of the Chapter is to provide support to Euro-Atlantic processes in the region and speed up the NATO membership of the remaining aspirant states in the Balkans.
A press release from the Croatian Defence Ministry said the defence officials will talk about the “enhanced presence” of the US in the region, the security situation generally, and the shared burden of defence investments between the United States and Europe.
BIRN asked the Defence Ministry about its plans to deploy more troops on NATO’s Eastern Flank but it did not respond by the time of publication.
The ministry was also asked whether it expected a negative reaction from that large group of Montenegrin, mostly ethnic Serbs, who cherish positive attitudes toward Russia.
A majority of Montenegrin citizens, according to the latest polls, still oppose the country’s NATO membership, mostly because of their warm feelings about Russia and anger about the NATO bombing of former Yugoslavia and its role in the 1999 Kosovo conflict.
Last week, the Montenegrin authorities faced a sharp reaction after parliament approved the decision to send two military officers to the joint NATO operation in Kosovo, KFOR.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said on July 8 that the gesture could not be considered friendly toward Serbia, followed by similar words from the Serbian Defence Minister Aleksandar Vulin who said that, by sending troops, Montenegro wanted to support Kosovo independence.
Montenegrin Defence Minister Predrag Boskovic tried to justify the decision, insisting that by deploying officers in Kosovo, “Montenegro did not betray Serbia”.
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