US VP Pence Slams Russia Over Montenegro ‘Coup Plot’

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By Dusica Tomovic

US Vice President Mike Pence claimed that Russia wants to destabilise the Balkan region and was to blame for an alleged attempt to overthrow the Montenegrin government last year.

Addressing Balkan leaders at a summit in Podgorica on Wednesday, US Vice President Mike Pence accused Russia of being behind an alleged attempted coup in Montenegro last October in order to prevent it from joining NATO.

Pence also accused Russia of “continuing to seek to redraw international borders by force” in the Western Balkans.

“Russia has worked to destabilise the region, undermine your democracies and divide you from each other and from the rest of Europe,” he said.

Russia has repeatedly denied any involvement in the alleged plot to overthrow the government during last October’s general elections in Montenegro.

Balkan Insight

The Balkan Insight (formerly the Balkin Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN) is a close group of editors and trainers that enables journalists in the region to produce in-depth analytical and investigative journalism on complex political, economic and social themes. BIRN emerged from the Balkan programme of the Institute for War & Peace Reporting, IWPR, in 2005. The original IWPR Balkans team was mandated to localise that programme and make it sustainable, in light of changing realities in the region and the maturity of the IWPR intervention. Since then, its work in publishing, media training and public debate activities has become synonymous with quality, reliability and impartiality. A fully-independent and local network, it is now developing as an efficient and self-sustainable regional institution to enhance the capacity for journalism that pushes for public debate on European-oriented political and economic reform.

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