Spajic Fires Back at Vucic Over Serbian Arms to Ukraine
Spajic answered Vucic from his X account, called him Russia's PR man, and asked how Serbia sends weapons to Ukraine while giving Moscow and Europe different messages.
Montenegrin Prime Minister Milojko Spajic answered Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic on Tuesday evening, August 11, in a post from his account on X, @MickeySpajic. What matters more for Belgrade than the tone is the topic Spajic chose: a dispute that until the previous evening had been about Serbs in Montenegro, the census and Knin, and which the Montenegrin prime minister shifted with a single question toward foreign policy, sanctions on Russia and the weapons reaching the Ukrainian front from Serbia.
Spajic opened by insisting Podgorica is not looking for a fight.
“Montenegro does not want a conflict with Serbia. We want good neighborly relations, but also a clear European policy that Mr. Vucic, apparently, does not want to understand,” Spajic said.
He then turned personal. “And it is not really appropriate for someone in his position to take on the role of Russia’s PR man and lecture others about principle,” the Montenegrin prime minister added, a characterization rarely leveled at a Serbian president by the head of a neighboring government, and one delivered without going through any diplomatic channel.
He closed the post with the question he had flagged as simple:
“So one simple question for President Vucic: how is it that Serbia, according to available data, is one of the more significant sources of weapons and ammunition for Ukraine, while it sends one message to Moscow and another to Europe? We in Montenegro have no problem with a clear position. We only have a problem with double standards.”
Spajic cited “available data” without naming it, and offered no figure, export license or intermediary. The claim stays political rather than documented, but it packages into one question something Belgrade has been asked for years: Serbia has not joined sanctions against Russia, and its defense industry is running at full capacity.
How the Exchange Began
The trigger was neither the census nor X, but a diplomatic appointment. Montenegro announced it would send its own diplomatic representative to Knin for the anniversary of Operation Storm (Oluja), whose beginning is marked on August 5.
Vucic responded by pointing out that Podgorica had sent no one to the commemoration of Serbian victims in Mrkonjic Grad, and said further decisions of that kind would follow. In the same set of remarks, he also criticized Montenegro for always being first to adopt new European Union sanctions packages against Russia, a complaint that has since become a fixture of his messaging toward Podgorica.
The claims he made went beyond foreign policy. Vucic said the government in Podgorica is running a policy of re-educating Serbs in Montenegro, who he said make up 33 percent of the population, so that in future censuses fewer of them declare themselves Serb. He also claimed that 90 percent of media airtime in Montenegro goes to attacks on Serbia, while Serbian media mention Montenegro only occasionally.
“You don’t even have to look at their institutional moves toward Serbia, which are appalling,” the Serbian president said.
What Spajic Left Out
The Montenegrin prime minister did not touch on any of those points. His post mentions neither Knin nor Operation Storm, neither the census nor the percentages about Serbs in Montenegro. Nor does it answer the accusation about a media campaign.
That omission is itself part of the message. Spajic took the one strand of Vucic’s criticism that Podgorica treats as an asset, its alignment with the European Union’s foreign and security policy, and turned it back into a question about consistency. In that framing, Montenegro is not a country defending its treatment of the Serb community, but one asking Serbia to explain its own position between Brussels and Moscow.
As a result, the two sides in this exchange are not really addressing each other. Belgrade talks about identity and the rights of Serbs in a neighboring state, Podgorica about the sanctions regime and the European path. Both messages went out publicly, one in a statement to the media, the other on a social network, and neither passed through the institutions that exist precisely for disputes of this kind.
As of this writing, no official response to Spajic’s post had come from Belgrade. The next point where the two administrations will have to deal with each other is not diplomatic but calendar driven: the next European Union sanctions package against Russia, the same one Montenegro, by Vucic’s own account, always adopts first.
