British officials believe Russian authorities were behind a plot in October last year to kill Montenegro’s pro-Western prime minister, the Sunday Telegraph newspaper reported, citing senior British government sources.
A special prosecutor in the former Yugoslav republic said in November last year that a group of “Russian nationalists” had planned to assassinate Montenegrin Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic to get an opposition party into power.
Moscow denied involvement in any plot and Montenegrin opposition parties have said the plot was fabricated and accuse Djukanovic of using the security services to help extend his quarter century of dominance.
The British newspaper yesterday reported that senior British officials believed there had been a plot to kill Djukanovic and that Russia had constructed it in a way that it could be blamed on rogue Russian nationalists if uncovered.
“You are talking about a plot to disrupt or take over a government in some way. You can’t imagine that there wasn’t some kind of approval process,” the newspaper quoted one unnamed source as saying.
The newspaper said British and US intelligence agencies gathered evidence of high-level Russian involvement in the plot for Montenegro’s government.
Asked about the newspaper report, the British Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Montenegro had identified Russian nationals as behind the plot.
“Montenegro must itself deliver a competent, transparent judicial process and trial of the coup suspects,” a foreign ministry spokeswoman said.
“Success would be a major step in convincing the international community of real progress in Montenegrin rule of law reform and compatibility with NATO and EU standards,” she added.
The head of Britain’s domestic spy agency in November last year said that Russia was pushing its foreign policy in increasingly aggressive ways including cyberattacks and espionage, posing a growing threat to Britain and the rest of Europe.
Moscow has denied this and challenged Britain to produce hard evidence.
Tens of thousands of Filipino Catholics yesterday twirled white cloths and chanted “Viva, viva,” as a centuries-old statue of Jesus Christ was paraded through the streets of Manila in the nation’s biggest annual religious event. The day-long procession began before dawn, with barefoot volunteers pulling the heavy carriage through narrow streets where the devout waited in hopes of touching the icon, believed to hold miraculous powers. Thousands of police were deployed to manage crowds that officials believe could number in the millions by the time the statue reaches its home in central Manila’s Quiapo church around midnight. More than 800 people had sought
DENIAL: Pyongyang said a South Korean drone filmed unspecified areas in a North Korean border town, but Seoul said it did not operate drones on the dates it cited North Korea’s military accused South Korea of flying drones across the border between the nations this week, yesterday warning that the South would face consequences for its “unpardonable hysteria.” Seoul quickly denied the accusation, but the development is likely to further dim prospects for its efforts to restore ties with Pyongyang. North Korean forces used special electronic warfare assets on Sunday to bring down a South Korean drone flying over North Korea’s border town. The drone was equipped with two cameras that filmed unspecified areas, the General Staff of the North Korean People’s Army said in a statement. South Korea infiltrated another drone
COMMUNIST ALIGNMENT: To Lam wants to combine party chief and state presidency roles, with the decision resting on the election of 200 new party delegates next week Communist Party of Vietnam General Secretary To Lam is seeking to combine his party role with the state presidency, officials said, in a move that would align Vietnam’s political structure more closely to China’s, where President Xi Jinping (習近平) heads the party and state. Next week about 1,600 delegates are to gather in Hanoi to commence a week-long communist party congress, held every five years to select new leaders and set policy goals for the single-party state. Lam, 68, bade for both top positions at a party meeting last month, seeking initial party approval ahead of the congress, three people briefed by
Indonesia and Malaysia have become the first countries to block Grok, the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot developed by Elon Musk’s xAI, after authorities said it was being misused to generate sexually explicit and nonconsensual images. The moves reflect growing global concern over generative AI tools that can produce realistic images, sound and text, while existing safeguards fail to prevent their abuse. The Grok chatbot, which is accessed through Musk’s social media platform X, has been criticized for generating manipulated images, including depictions of women in bikinis or sexually explicit poses, as well as images involving children. Regulators in the two Southeast Asian
RSS