Behind disinformation and “fake news” in Montenegro often lies a deeper problem: anonymous targeting campaigns taken up by domestic politicians, media outlets, and social networks. While Europe recognizes FIMI as a threat to democracy, Montenegrin institutions still mostly react late, partially, or not at all.
The portal appeared just before the elections. It had no known authors, no editors, no impressum, and no public ownership. It published lists of people it labeled as collaborators of foreign intelligence services, traitors, or individuals linked to crime. The articles were shared across social networks and then picked up in the political arena as weapons in polemics. After the elections, the portal vanished. Years later, the public still does not reliably know who conceived it, who financed it, and who used it for the political discreditation of dissenters.
That is what “Udar” looked like, an anonymous website launched in Montenegro ahead of the 2020 parliamentary elections, one of the most challenging moments in Montenegrin politics, when, after decades in power, the Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS) fell from government.
The role of “Udar” was not merely to publish contentious content. “Udar” manufactured an atmosphere. In the pre-election moment, it branded people as security threats, as collaborators of foreign centers of power, or as enemies of the state.
Аlthough shut down soon after the elections, the portal remains an example of how manipulative narratives and disinformation function in practice. Often initially presented as a defense of the state, the people, faith, or identity, they quickly become a political weapon for settling scores with dissenters once they are taken up by domestic actors: politicians, media outlets, anonymous portals, digital networks…
“It was a dirty pre-election campaign carried out by the former regime, in which officers of the National Security Agency (ANB) were directly involved, with the aim of personally and professionally discrediting political opponents,” Filip Adžić, former Minister of the Interior in Montenegro’s 43rd Government, tells Res Publica.
Аdžić was one of those targeted by “Udar.”
In Montenegro, foreign interference, disinformation, and hybrid threats are most often discussed in the midst of a political crisis, when the problem is described in dramatic terms, as an attack on the state, the European path, democracy, or stability. But as soon as the crisis subsides, what ought to matter most is missing: a clear and coordinated institutional response to such threats.
Montenegro lacks a sufficiently visible system that would track how manipulative narratives emerge, who takes them up, through which media and digital channels they spread, and when they grow into organized targeting campaigns. Reactions are most often belated, partial, or left to professional media, civil society, and fact-checking platforms.
European Commission (EC) reports have been pointing to this problem for years. In its 2024 Report on Montenegro, the EC recommended that the state invest additional efforts to narrow the space for “foreign interference and information manipulation, including disinformation,” and to build resilience to hybrid threats by adopting a strategy for countering hybrid threats along with an accompanying action plan.
The same recommendation was repeated in the 2025 Report.
In other words, the problem has been recognized, but Montenegro evidently still does not treat foreign manipulative narratives as a systemic challenge — one that requires connecting media policy, cybersecurity, the judiciary, regulators, education, the electoral system, and civil society.
For the purposes of this article, Res Publica reached out to Montenegro’s Ministry of Culture and Media and to the Cybersecurity Agency. The numerous questions concerned whether the state has a mechanism for identifying and monitoring foreign information manipulation and interference in the information space – FIMI – and how institutions distinguish such phenomena from ordinary disinformation, political propaganda, or hate speech.
No answers had arrived by the time this article was published.
FIMI is not just fake news
FIMI cannot be reduced to “fake news.” It is a broader pattern of manipulative behavior that can threaten values, political processes, and trust in institutions. According to the definition used by the European External Action Service (EEAS), FIMI is a mostly unlawful, or not necessarily unlawful, pattern of behavior that can negatively affect values, procedures, and political processes, and that is manipulative, intentional, and coordinated. The actors can be state actors, non-state actors, or their proxies.
That is an important distinction. Disinformation is only one part of the problem. FIMI also includes the anonymous placement of accusations, the coordinated amplification of messages, the targeting of individuals and communities, covert political advertising, networks of accounts, identity manipulation, the exploitation of crises, and domestic actors who translate foreign or regional narratives into local divisions.
That is precisely Montenegro’s problem.
The director of the Media Institute of Montenegro (IMCG), Olivera Nikolić, warns that Montenegro’s media and digital space is vulnerable not only because of disinformation in the narrow sense, but because of a broader pattern of manipulation in which “legitimate criticism is replaced by labeling,” legal or political debate is turned into an identity conflict, and the person or group expressing a view is portrayed as “an enemy, a traitor, a foreign mercenary, an anti-Serb, a komita, a collaborator of the intelligence services, or a threat to the state and the people.”
In such a space, Nikolić says, the biggest problem is not merely that false claims exist, but that coordinated campaigns are often not immediately recognized as campaigns.
From legal criticism to accusations of treason
As an example, Nikolić cites the attacks on Tea Gorjanc Prelević, executive director of Human Rights Action (HRA), following her criticism of the 2022 Fundamental Agreement with the Serbian Orthodox Church (SPC).
At the time, HRA raised legal objections to the text of the agreement, pointing to questions of its compliance with the Constitution, the laws, and the secular character of the state. That was legitimate public criticism, and the subject of the debate was a concrete document and its legal effects. However, part of the public space did not respond to the legal arguments; instead, it translated the criticism into an identity-based attack on the SPC, Orthodoxy, Serbia, and Serbs.
Targeting does not have to be aimed only at individuals; it can also be aimed at entire communities.
That became evident in early October 2025 in Podgorica, after a violent incident in which, according to initial information from the Police Directorate, a Montenegrin citizen was stabbed, with foreign, specifically Turkish, nationals suspected of the attack. It later turned out that the persons linked to the incident were not Turkish citizens at all. But the damage had already been done. Unverified claims had already spread across social networks and certain portals, voiced by politicians as well as by individuals who consider themselves civic activists, along with messages portraying Turkish citizens in Montenegro as a security threat.
Thus a single local incident grew into a pretext for collective accusation, pressure, and hostility toward an entire community, which even resulted in some serious political reactions, such as the introduction of a visa regime for Turkish citizens, but also in physical attacks on Turks and their property in Montenegro. Many moved away after these events. This case shows how disinformation can produce unimaginable consequences within a short time.
Nikolić sees a similar pattern, though in an ideological direction, in the film “Referendum: A Story of Invented Freedom,” broadcast ahead of the celebration of Montenegro’s Independence Day on May 21 on the Adria and Prva television channels. The film sparked numerous public controversies and is problematic because its authors did not conduct the debate about the 2006 referendum through facts, political context, and the consequences of that process; instead, they portrayed Montenegrin independence and identity as illegitimate and artificial, alongside the numerous insults and false constructions presented in the film.
For years, Montenegro has been exposed to a range of external influences, Russian, Serbian, American, Chinese, European, regional, ideological, religious, economic, as well as to broader anti-Western and authoritarian narratives circulating through the digital space. Yet these influences would not have the same power without domestic actors who translate them into the language of local divisions.
Thus a foreign narrative in Montenegro rarely remains “foreign.” It adapts to the domestic context. A message about the endangerment of one people becomes an attack on political opponents. A story about foreign mercenaries becomes an attack on non-governmental organizations and independent media. A narrative about protecting tradition becomes a weapon against women, minorities, or the LGBTIQ+ community. Security vocabulary becomes a way to brand people as collaborators of the intelligence services or enemies of the state, without evidence.
The damage from targeting often persists even after a denial. When someone is labeled a traitor, a foreign mercenary, or a collaborator of the services enough times, part of the public begins to perceive that label as a “possibility,” even when there is no evidence. That is the goal of such campaigns: they do not have to prove the accusation, producing doubt is enough.
That mechanism was visible in the case of the Turkish citizens, when inaccurate or unverified information about their alleged responsibility quickly fed into both the broader anti-migrant narrative and the narrative of foreigners as a security threat.
The case of Miloš Medenica
Miloš Medenica, son of the former President of the Supreme Court and former Supreme State Prosecutor Vesna Medenica, has been highly visible in Montenegro’s public space in recent months, not only as a figure in one of the country’s most important judicial-criminal cases, but also as someone who speaks out in video formats on social networks, comments on political, judicial, and security topics, and enters debates about the state of Montenegro’s security system.
In January 2026, Miloš Medenica was sentenced at first instance to more than 10 years in prison by the High Court in Podgorica for creating and leading a criminal organization engaged in drug trafficking, cigarette smuggling, bribery, and the illegal possession of weapons. In the same case, his mother was also sentenced at first instance to 10 years in prison. She was acquitted of the charges of creating a criminal organization but was convicted of unlawful influence, accepting bribes, and influencing court decisions.
Medenica fled house arrest on the day his verdict was handed down before the High Court in Podgorica. Since then, he has been addressing the public through video recordings and posts on social networks, commenting on the work of the police, the prosecution, the security sector, and political actors. His statements have attracted additional attention because they come not merely from an ordinary fugitive from justice, but from a person convicted at first instance in a case that raised the question of the links between crime, the judiciary, and the institutions of power.
However, after the first published video, the police announced that the content could be viewed in the context of hybrid activity and an attempt to destabilize the security system. The police assessed that Miloš Medenica’s content was AI-generated, that he was acting as a “bot,” and that it was part of a coordinated campaign.
The problem, however, is that no clear forensic evidence for such claims was presented to the public: it was not shown who, if anyone, manages his accounts, whether the content is authentic or technically manipulated, whether a network of coordinated dissemination exists, or on what basis it was concluded that this is an organized information operation.
This very case opens space for what contemporary debates on disinformation call the liar’s dividend, a situation in which the mere possibility of manipulation becomes useful to those seeking to evade accountability.
When institutions label content as part of hybrid activity without clear evidence, and do not show the public the basis on which they reached that conclusion, a dangerous space opens up: any authentic post can be declared a fabrication, any inconvenient allegation an “operation,” and any question an attempt at destabilization.
In the case of Miloš Medenica, this is particularly visible.
Source: envato.com
Europe looks beyond fact-checking
In recent years, European practice has increasingly proceeded from the premise that the fight against disinformation cannot be reduced to verifying individual claims. Fact-checking is important, but it is not enough.
In its 2025 Report, the European Commission specifically states that Montenegro should strengthen its institutional response to disinformation and hate speech, in line with the National Media Strategy for 2023–2027, in order to protect media freedoms, pluralism, and the integrity of the information space. The EC warned that Montenegro must ensure the effective implementation of the media laws adopted in 2024 and protect the independence of the regulator for audiovisual media services.
The European approach includes monitoring coordinated networks, transparency of political advertising, accountability of digital platforms, data access for researchers, protection of elections, strengthening media literacy, and cooperation among regulators, civil society, the media, and security institutions.
The Digital Services Act, the EU’s law on digital services, therefore introduces special obligations for very large online platforms. They must assess and mitigate systemic risks, including risks to public debate, fundamental rights, electoral processes, and public safety.
In other words, the question is no longer only whether a claim is true. The questions are also who placed it, who paid for it, who amplified it, why it appeared at a particular political moment, through which channels it spread, and who benefited from it.
Many studies confirm that manipulative campaigns cannot be understood by looking at a single portal or a single social network. A study of coordinated information operations ahead of the 2024 US elections showed that coordination often crosses platform boundaries, X, Facebook, and Telegram, and that such networks can systematically spread low-credibility, biased, and conspiratorial content.
More recent research on FIMI also warns that manipulative activities operate across different social spheres and information spaces, which makes a coordinated response increasingly difficult.
This means that problems like “Udar” will likely be more sophisticated, faster, and even harder to prove in the future. An anonymous portal can be replaced by a network of accounts, a Telegram channel, TikTok content, AI-generated visuals, or coordinated comments.
But the logic remains the same: target, discredit, produce doubt, and, in the end, evade accountability.
Similar patterns in the region and beyond
The Western Balkans is fertile ground for FIMI: its societies are politically polarized, its institutions are often weak, its media are economically vulnerable, and its digital space is connected through a shared language and regional platforms.
Narratives that emerge in one country quickly cross borders.
In Serbia, manipulative narratives often spread through tabloids, television stations with national frequencies, and networks of portals. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, disinformation and foreign influence are intertwined with ethnic divisions and secessionist policies. In North Macedonia, the experience of political crises and the referendum showed how much digital campaigns can affect trust in institutions and democratic processes.
Montenegro shares all of these vulnerabilities, but it also has an additional problem: it is a small society in which a digital campaign quickly spills over into real life, when someone is targeted on a portal or on social networks, the consequences are felt at work, in the family, in the neighborhood, on the street. That is why, in the Montenegrin context, targeting is often more personal, more direct, and more dangerous.
European examples show why such campaigns can no longer be treated as marginal online incidents. In Romania, the second round of the 2024 presidential elections was annulled after suspicions of foreign interference and manipulation via TikTok, algorithmic amplification, and influencer networks. Viginum, the French state agency responsible for detecting and analyzing foreign digital interference and information manipulation on online platforms, described that case as an example of an “astroturfing” campaign, creating the appearance of spontaneous mass support through the coordinated activity of a small number of accounts.
Faced with campaigns such as Russia’s “Doppelganger,” in which the websites of well-known media outlets were cloned in order to spread anti-Ukrainian and anti-Western narratives, the EU has also announced strengthened coordination through the European Centre for Democratic Resilience. The goal is for member states and candidate countries to exchange warnings and knowledge about foreign manipulative operations more effectively.
Nikolić warns that the media must not uncritically relay claims that someone is a “collaborator of the intelligence services,” a “foreign mercenary,” or a “traitor.” Such claims must not be transmitted as ordinary political statements. They require evidence, a response from the other side, and clear editorial distancing.
Montenegrin institutions mostly react only once a concrete threat, insult, lawsuit, or criminal complaint appears. But manipulative campaigns do not operate solely through individual incidents. They operate through repetition, coordination, and dissemination.
That is why it is necessary to track the entire chain: who produces the narrative, who finances it, through which channels it spreads, who exploits it politically, and what damage it causes to individuals, communities, and the democratic process.
The response to such campaigns must begin with transparency, the public must know who stands behind the media outlets and portals that influence it. It is equally important to monitor how narratives spread, because manipulative messages rarely remain within a single outlet; they travel from political statements and portals to television, social networks, and comment sections. Public officials, she stresses, bear a special responsibility, because freedom of speech cannot serve as an excuse for branding dissenters as enemies.
