In a sharp, analytical critique published by Prishtina Insight, regional security expert Drizan Shala has dismantled recent claims by Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić that Montenegro is waging a “hybrid war” against Serbia.
Shala argues that Belgrade is deliberately inflating standard national security terminology to mischaracterize ordinary domestic dissent and independent journalism as coordinated foreign subversion. This rhetorical overreach, Shala notes, is heavily borrowed from the Kremlin’s playbook—recasting internal political failures as foreign-engineered “color revolutions.”
1. The Rhetorical Attack: Journalism Dressed as War
The diplomatic row erupted following Vučić’s appearance on Televizija Prva, where he accused Podgorica of utilizing Montenegrin media outlets as an asymmetric platform to destabilize and overthrow the government in Belgrade.
Deconstructing Belgrade's "Hybrid War" Claim
[ THE DOCTRINAL DEFINITION ] ──► ACTUAL HYBRID WARFARE
• Coordinated operations below the threshold of open conflict: cyberattacks,
clandestine intelligence networks, economic coercion, and covert proxies.
[ THE REALITY OF THE CHARGE ] ──► CRITICAL PRESS COVERAGE
• Belgrade's evidence consists entirely of Montenegrin newspapers reporting
on and expressing sympathy for the ongoing, year-long Serbian protests.
[ THE STRATEGIC DISTORTION ] ──► THE KREMLIN PLAYBOOK
• Adopting Moscow's signature lexicon ("color revolution") to imply that
every internal protester is a foreign asset and every policy failure is a plot.
2. The Tivat Charter Incident: Asymmetric Realities
Shala contrasts Belgrade’s vague, unsubstantiated claims of media warfare with a highly specific, documented operation pointing in the opposite direction. Just two days before Montenegro hosted the high-stakes EU-Western Balkans Summit, Montenegrin law enforcement intercepted a direct intelligence operation originating from Serbia.
The Intercepted Serbian Operation at Tivat Airport
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ │
│ [ THE CONFRONTATION ] ────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │
│ • On June 3, Montenegrin police and the National Security Agency │ │
│ blocked a suspicious charter flight arriving from Belgrade. │ │
│ │ │
│ [ THE MANPOWER & EQUIPMENT ] ─────────────────────────────────────┤ │
│ • The plane carried 87 passengers—almost exclusively men—traveling │ │
│ under a Serbian ruling-party banner with advanced communication gear.│ │
│ │ │
│ [ THE TACTICAL ASSESSMENT ] ──────────────────────────────────────┘ │
│ • The chair of Montenegro's parliamentary security committee linked │
│ individuals on board to the physical beating of demonstrators in │
│ Serbia, classifying them as an unauthorized "advance party." │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
“The government invoking hybrid war over hostile newspapers is the same government whose party flew a planeload of its men onto a neighbor’s coast on the eve of a summit and was caught doing it.”
— Drizan Shala, Security Analyst
3. Scale, Proof, and the Devaluation of Security Terms
The structural asymmetry between the two nations further highlights the improbability of Belgrade’s claims. Serbia possesses a population and institutional apparatus more than ten times the size of Montenegro, significantly raising the burden of proof for any alleged Montenegrin aggression.
| The Security Metric | Serbia’s Structural Standing | Montenegro’s Structural Standing |
| Demographics & Scale | Population: Greater than 6 million. Commands the largest intelligence services and media reach in the region. | Population: Roughly 600,000. Features limited cross-border institutional weight. |
| Nature of Evidence | Produced zero names, operational blueprints, or technical data to substantiate the hybrid war claim. | Produced exact passenger manifests, agency findings, and hardware logs during the Tivat interception. |
| Targeted Actors | Consistently aims “hybrid interference” labels at neighboring Montenegro and Croatia to deflect from domestic civil unrest. | Focuses institutional defenses on counter-intelligence and securing regional EU integration summits. |
The Cost of Disinformation Crying Wolf
Shala warns that treating critical editorial lines and unfavorable headlines as acts of war carries a dangerous cost for the Western Balkans. The region faces genuine, documented hybrid threats, including highly sophisticated Russian influence operations, Iranian cyber campaigns, and weaponized transnational disinformation networks.
Every time a democratic nation’s leader spends the term “hybrid war” on an uncomplimentary newspaper column, the phrase loses its currency. By weaponizing the lexicon of the war room to mask a profound maritime and security embarrassment at Tivat airport, Belgrade has not highlighted a genuine threat—it has simply proven that when a government cannot handle domestic dissent, it will eagerly invent a foreign hand to blame.
