Brnabic Fires Back at Spajic: Vucic Helped You Take Power

Serbian parliament speaker Ana Brnabic fired back at Montenegrin Prime Minister Milojko Spajic on Tuesday evening, August 11, in a post on X. The exchange started with Spajic’s message that Montenegro does not want conflict with Serbia but has a problem with double standards, along with his view that it is not appropriate for Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic to act as Russia’s PR man and lecture others on principle.

In her reply, Brnabic drew a line between Montenegro as a state and what she called official Podgorica, then delivered a sentence that by the next day had turned into a political story of its own.

“President of Serbia Aleksandar Vucic was good for you when he needed to help you take power, but now he’s Russia’s PR man to you. When someone has no backbone and no shame, like you have neither, that’s how it looks,” the parliament speaker said.

She also argued that Serbia holds a principled position on international law, adding: “We respect international law always and without exception. For you, it’s whatever you’re told: sometimes borders are inviolable, sometimes they don’t matter. Don’t lecture Vucic about principles, Milojko Spajic, you who have no principle at all except blind obedience.”

Why one sentence became a case of its own

Milos Djurickovic, an official with the European Alliance, told the Podgorica daily Vijesti on Wednesday, August 12, that Brnabic’s claim about helping Spajic take power amounted to an admission that Belgrade interferes in Montenegro’s internal affairs. Djurickovic said that in a normal state, a senior official publicly admitting to interference in another country’s electoral process would be a major scandal demanding an investigation and prosecution of those responsible. He called on Montenegro’s Foreign Ministry to respond and to summon Serbia’s ambassador.

That shifted the argument from an exchange of political messages to the terrain of state to state relations. Spajic’s original remark was a political assessment of Serbia’s foreign policy, while Podgorica read Brnabic’s answer as a claim that Belgrade took part in a change of power in Montenegro, a charge of an entirely different weight.

What Brnabic cited as her reasons

In the same post, the parliament speaker listed three specific grievances behind her assessment of how official Podgorica treats Serbia.

• recognition of the unilaterally declared independence of Kosovo and Metohija
• the absence of support during commemorations for the victims of Operation “Storm”
• the status of the Serbian language, which is not official in Montenegro even though, she said, more than 40 percent of the population speaks it

The sharpest part of her post concerned the commemoration of “Storm.”

“Unfortunately, official Podgorica, not Montenegro, has shown that it wishes the worst for Serbia and the Serbian people. You recognized the unilateral declaration of the so called independence of our province of Kosovo and Metohija. You were not with us while we mourned the victims of the largest ethnic cleansing on the European continent, the war crime called ‘Storm,’ instead you stood with those who celebrate the expulsion and killing of Serbs simply because they are Serbs,” Brnabic said.

The question of official status for the Serbian language in Montenegro has been open since the last census and resurfaces in public debate whenever relations between the two states cool. This time Brnabic used it as an argument in the dispute over principle rather than as a stand alone issue.

Reactions from both sides

Milos Vucevic also responded to the messages from Podgorica that same day. As of this writing, no official response to Brnabic’s post had come from the Montenegrin government, and the reaction that did arrive came from party officials rather than institutions.

What happens next depends on whether Montenegro’s Foreign Ministry acts on the European Alliance’s call. If it summons Serbia’s ambassador, the exchange that began on X becomes a matter of formal communication between the two states rather than an argument between two politicians.