NATO launches operation to suppress Serb protests in Montenegro
Montenegro will inevitably face a change of power if the current ruling regime does not repeal the law adopted at the end of December allowing the confiscation of shrines of the Serbian Orthodox Church.
Metropolitan Amfilohiy of Montenegro-Primorsky made this warning, the PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“If it is a government of the people, it will do so. If it doesn't do this, I will say: down with it. Because this is not people’s power,” Amfilohije said in Tivat.
Protests continue in Montenegro. In many cities of the country, prayer services and litias were held, uniting believers and the priesthood of the Serbian Orthodox Church, against which this law is directed.
In particular, believers and priests took part in mass processions in Podgorica, Beran, Belopol, Niksic, Zabljak, Mojkovac, Herceg Novi, Bar, Plav, Spuz. 
Montenegrin Foreign Minister Srdjan Darmanovic saw “numerous elements of hybrid warfare” in prayers and religious processions.
“Montenegro is aware of these hybrid threats and, as a NATO member, has an obligation to counter them,” Darmanovic said at a meeting with EU and NATO ambassadors in Podgorica.
NATO quickly responded to the call of its new small member.
According to the Montenegrin newspaper Pobeda, Marshal Stuart Peach said that a decision had been made to send a team to combat hybrid threats to Montenegro.
At a meeting of the NATO Military Committee, which ended yesterday in Brussels, the marshal said that NATO's first counter-hybrid team had been deployed to counter Russian actions.
“NATO's first counter-hybrid support team is deployed to our ally Montenegro,” Peach said.
Montenegro separated from Serbia in 2006 under the pretext of “faster integration into the EU”, but has still not received EU membership. In 2017, against the will of the population, Montenegro was included in NATO by the pro-Western ruling elite without a referendum. Now about 30% of the population of this former part of Yugoslavia call themselves ethnic Serbs.
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