The column by Željko Ivanović, a columnist for Podgorica’s Vijesti, published on June 3, 2025, under the title Glory to Ukraine (Slava Ukrajini), is not politically noteworthy merely because of its scandalous attempt to normalize the salute used by Ukrainian Nazis during the Second World War — an act that undermines any moral high ground in criticizing Metropolitan Joanikije for his oral hagiography of the Nazi collaborator and war criminal Pavle Đurišić.
Nor is it significant for its parroting of Western corporate media spin — portraying Putin and Trump as totalitarian dictators (which, in different ways, they undoubtedly are) — while sparing Volodymyr Zelensky of such labeling, despite his expired mandate, continued self-declaration as Ukraine’s president, his banning of political parties, imprisonment of political opponents, persecution and assassination of independent journalists and intellectuals, and the ongoing state terror directed at the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
Nor is it remarkable for deliberately omitting the crucial context that Ukraine is the battleground of a long-standing proxy war between NATO and Russia.
Nor, finally, is it noteworthy for the completely unfounded claim that the destruction or damage of a certain number of Russia’s Cold War-era strategic bombers by Ukrainian intelligence — aircraft no longer in production for over thirty years and increasingly vulnerable due to advances in modern warfare technologies, particularly drones — represented a fatal blow to Russia.
What makes Ivanović’s column truly interesting is its function as a kind of sequel to last week’s programmatic text penned under the clumsily crafted pseudonym “Dr. Eugen Popović.” That piece advocates for a totalitarian concept of ultimately “completing” Montenegrin society, paving the way for a wholly new phase in the right-wing reconfiguration of Montenegrin identity. The text suggests that Montenegrin nationalist revisionism is entering a new propagandist phase, in which not only the communists but also the very concept of Yugoslavism will be blamed for allegedly denying the thousand-year continuity of the Montenegrin ethnic identity and its supposed endangerment by the Serbs — mirroring patterns seen in other post-Yugoslav right-wing revisionisms. Much like in neighboring colonial regimes, the projected Montenegrin future requires an enemy — one that, unlike the colonial masters, cannot defend itself. Ideally, this enemy is long dead, such as various forms of Bolshevik-style communism and Yugoslavism — thus making them, rather than the colonial overlords, the primary scapegoats for obstructing Montenegro’s “completion.” In this light, the cry “Glory to Ukraine” is neither directed at Ukrainians nor uttered out of solidarity with their wartime (mis)fortunes, but rather serves as an unmistakable call to begin implementing the Ukrainian model in Montenegro.
And what exactly does that mean? Ukraine stands as a successful outcome of a monstrous social engineering project, fully backed by Western political power centers — one that transformed an anti-fascist society, which made the single greatest sacrifice in securing the Red Army’s victory in World War II, into a revisionist dystopia where the birthday of Ukrainian Nazi leader Stepan Bandera has become a major national holiday. That would be tantamount to celebrating “Drljević Day” or “Štedimlija Day” in Montenegro — and, to be fair, the academic staff at the Faculty for Montenegrin Language and Literature in Cetinje have already done much in that direction — or even reaching, with or without such celebrations, the absolute nadir of post-truth society’s assault on historical facts and on its own dignity.
Thus, Ivanović’s claim that “Putin plays the role of regional — and even planetary — savior from the resurrected Nazism in Kyiv, just as Slobodan Milošević and Momir Bulatović ‘saved’ us from the ‘resurgent Ustashas’ in the 1990s, a narrative now echoed and defended by Mandić, Joanikije, Knežević, and the whole gang from Belgrade, headed by supreme commander Aleksandar Vučić,” is not a critique aimed at Putin, Milošević, Bulatović, or the current Serbian political and ecclesiastical leadership in Montenegro. Rather, it is an attempt to use the disintegration of Serbian society in the 1990s to obscure the creeping — and now blatantly transparent — waves of historical revisionism in Croatia, Ukraine, and also in Montenegro.
In Montenegro, the emerging new right is clearly pushing for a Ukrainian-style decommunization. But unlike the necessary and objective critical reassessment of the communist era, this effort aims not at historical truth, but at the rehabilitation of collaborationist ideologies and the “completion” of identity and statehood by finally disposing of inconvenient historical facts. In this context, Ivanović’s targeting of Metropolitan Joanikije of Montenegro and the Littoral, and Bishop Metodije of Budimlja and Nikšić, labeling them “red” bishops due to their sympathies for Russia, is no coincidence.
At this point, the ball is in the court of Serbian society, which remains far from overcoming the collapse it experienced during the 1990s. It is becoming increasingly clear that rigid anti-communism — which is not at all the same as a critical reassessment of the communist past — has begun to bare its teeth at its own children. Simply put, if you believe that a critical stance toward Stalinist repression, “Leftist deviations,” Goli Otok (Tito’s prison for Stalinists and those falsely accused of being Stalinists), and the fact that one could be sentenced to years in prison for telling a joke about Tito, somehow justifies panegyrics to Pavle Đurišić and the disgraceful Ravna Gora collaboration with Nazis, then you have effectively buried your most potent weapon in confronting the emerging new phase of Montenegrin nationalism.
Because one cannot denounce Nazism and its collaborators only when it is politically convenient. If you stand against Bandera, you must also stand against Drljević and Đurišić — otherwise, the sword you brandish is made of cheap plastic.
That’s why, ultimately, it is crucial to understand the following: the fight against historical revisionism is not about loyalty to Russia, Ukraine, the West, or the East — it is about intellectual integrity and moral consistency. If we fail to reject all forms of historical falsification, regardless of who promotes them and in whose interest, we are not defending the truth; we are endorsing the vile concept of ideological comfort. And societies that treat their dignity in this way do not build a future — they dig a pit that will one day serve as the mass grave of every identity they ever tried to construct.
