The Digital Forensic Center (DFC) has published a new analysis entitled "When Disinformation Shapes Reality: Media and Political Echoes of the Zabjelo Incident", in which it stated, among other things, that the escalation of the anti-migrant narrative in Montenegro has taken on a new function, that it is being instrumentalized as a lever against European integration.
We transmit the analysis in its entirety:
Recent events in Montenegro have drawn public attention to the issue of security and the status of foreign nationals. In the Podgorica settlement of Zabjelo, on October 26, 2025, a physical conflict occurred between a group of local boys from Podgorica and, according to police, four citizens of Azerbaijan and Turkey. During the conflict, cold weapons were used, and one citizen of Podgorica suffered a minor stab wound. The police arrested a citizen of Azerbaijan and a citizen of Turkey, but the investigating judge of the Higher Court in Podgorica terminated their detention because there is no reasonable suspicion that the two committed the criminal offense of attempted murder to the detriment of a citizen of Podgorica.
The incident in Zabjelo coincided with existing tensions in Montenegrin society, which are the result of narratives about Islamization, foreigners coming and taking over, and political instruments that use themes of migration and identity. This resulted in acts of vandalism, violence, and hate speech. In this sense, this case is not just a criminal incident but also a reflection of deeper systemic weaknesses: institutional, media, and political. If such phenomena are not stopped and processed in an adequate and just manner, Montenegro may witness repeated and more destructive cycles of social polarization.
The incident has triggered a wave of protests that are being articulated as a protection of citizens. However, it is clear that the background of the protests is clerical nationalist, as confirmed by the slogans that could be heard during the gathering, which are full of hate speech and xenophobia. The rise in tensions was contributed by statements from political parties, reporting by pro-Serbian media in Montenegro, as well as media from Serbia that are close to the regime of Aleksandar Vučić and are known for spreading disinformation and false narratives. All of the aforementioned facts, along with the amplification of disinformation and hate speech on social networks, have contributed to the strengthening of clerical nationalist activities in society. In Podgorica, Bar and Herceg Novi, catering facilities owned by Turkish citizens were set on fire. This has turned the situation from an individual security incident with elements of a criminal offense into a national, but also regional security issue, with clear elements of intimidation and collective retaliation against a specific group.
Visa regime
Faced with public pressure and an emergency security situation, the Government of Montenegro has resorted to the measure of introducing visas for Turkish citizens. Prime Minister Milojko Spajić announced this decision immediately after the outbreak of protests via social media, emphasizing that it would be made in an urgent procedure. At an extraordinary session of the Government, the visa-free regime with Turkey was soon formally suspended until further notice, temporarily, as the explanation states. The Government justified this measure by security reasons, control of the entry and stay of foreigners and the need to preserve public order, announcing that the visa regime for Turks would be temporary and that an accelerated visa issuance procedure would be introduced in order to mitigate the impact on the economy and tourism.
The decision has three layers of consequences. The first is domestically political: the government demonstrates that it is reacting decisively, but at the same time risks normalizing the narrative that the Turkish community is the security problem, which opens up space for selective stigmatization and ethnic profiling. The second is economic: Turkey is an important source of investment, real estate purchases and seasonal consumption, and Montenegro lives off the image of an easily accessible Adriatic destination. The entry restriction, even if formally temporary, carries a reputational risk that Montenegro begins to close its doors, which could directly affect the tourist season and revenues in the hospitality industry, air traffic and short-term rentals, especially if Turkey responds with measures against Montenegrin citizens or if some potential visitors simply transfer their arrangements to other Mediterranean destinations.
The third layer is foreign policy: the government ties this decision to alignment with European standards, as the EU expects candidate countries to align their visa policies with the Schengen list. In practice, this means that Montenegro would certainly have to introduce visas for Turkey and Russia before closing the negotiation chapters. The government is now presenting part of this decision as a step towards closer alignment with EU criteria, and not just as a reaction to street pressure.
However, the key weakness of the measure is that the introduction of visas acts as a political gesture towards the domestic audience, but does not solve the real problem that is being used to inflame tensions: the already present community of foreign nationals. Several tens of thousands of foreigners with legal status already reside in Montenegro, including, according to available data from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, around 13.800 Turkish citizens with temporary residence and 87 with permanent residence, while there are even more Russian citizens – around 23.330. It is important to emphasize that the number of foreigners compared to the statistics of the Ministry of Internal Affairs is significantly higher.
In the case of Turkish citizens, after the incident, the narrative was immediately criminalizing and nationally colored (Turks are attacking, Turks are occupying Podgorica). With Russian citizens, such an aggressive labeling campaign was not launched, even though they are more numerous than Turks, which indicates that the security argument was not consistently applied but was selectively politicized. In other words, the visa regime may limit the new influx, but it does not address existing structural problems: weak migration control, the way temporary residence permits are issued through the purchase of real estate or fictitious companies, as well as the fact that foreigners are instrumentalized in the daily political struggle and internal identity conflicts. Such dynamics carry a long-term risk that a particular migrant community will turn into a convenient internal culprit every time the government needs a quick and visible reaction – with real damage to the social cohesion and international relations of Montenegro.
That is why, in addition to introducing visas, more comprehensive measures are needed to solve the problem:
- Increased surveillance and verification of foreigners already residing in Montenegro, especially those involved in suspicious activities. This includes better coordination between the police, prosecutors and intelligence services in monitoring organized crime groups.
- Swift and decisive enforcement of the law: sanctioning anyone who breaks the rules, whether they are local citizens or foreigners. This means prosecuting those responsible for violence and hate speech, but also deporting or banning entry to those who make trouble for foreigners in the country.
- Improving immigration policy: clearly defining the conditions for obtaining a residence permit, monitoring the expiration of tourist stays and preventing abuses (e.g. fake study visas or fictitious companies for obtaining permits). The government has already initiated amendments to the Law on Foreigners, which should bring order to the area of temporary residence and work of foreign citizens.
Thematic clusters in public space
In the period from October 26.10 to October 30.10, 2025, there were a total of 1660 texts in domestic and regional media that were directly or indirectly related to the incident in Podgorica. Media from Serbia were dominant with 672 publications, while media from Montenegro published 592 texts on the topic of the incident, mainly within the security and socio-political framework.
DFC created a network of thematic clusters in virtual space using software. The visualization of thematic clusters shows a network of key concepts and their interconnections in the media and online space in the period from October 26 to 31, 2025, immediately after the incident in Podgorica when a Montenegrin citizen was injured in a conflict with citizens of Turkey and Azerbaijan.
The largest and most visible node (blue cluster) includes the terms Podgorica, violence, police, Turks, incident, arrests and indicates the main narrative that dominated the reporting. Within this framework, the media focused on the security aspect of the event, the police reaction, the arrests of foreign citizens, statements by state institutions and the measures that followed. This cluster reflects the theme of threat perception. The emphasis was on fear, police control and security issues in the capital.
The second, yellow-colored cluster connects the terms social media, hate speech, protests, xenophobia, migrants. It represents the reactionary layer of the discussion, in which the incident served as a trigger for hate speech and calls for protests.
The green cluster gathers terms such as attack, baseball bats, knife, migrants, violence, focusing on the physical confrontation in Zabjelo. This part of the network is dominated by short news and sensationalist headlines, which indicates the tabloidization of the incident and the strengthening of the emotional charge in the public. The cluster intertwines with the blue node through the terms attack and police, confirming that the security and sensationalist narratives acted complementary.
The red cluster includes the terms Aleksandar Vučić, NATO, Islam, Serbia, and indicates the regional politicization of the incident. This part of the network includes content from pro-Serbian and pro-Russian media, in which the incident in Montenegro is linked to geopolitical narratives, the alleged consequences of NATO policy, the threat to Orthodoxy in the region, and the broader migration agendas of the European Union. This is a typical example of a transnational narrative that uses a local incident as a framework for broader political messages and propaganda goals.
A smaller, isolated light blue cluster groups the terms security, Montenegro, region and represents analytical texts that attempted to rationalize the event and view it through a broader framework of institutional responsibility.
The culmination of the negative campaign
The negative campaign targeting Turkish citizens is not new in Montenegro. Narratives have been created for a long time that The Turks occupy Montenegro, that there are 100.00 Turks in Montenegro, that Turkish citizens are kidnapping children. This disinformation was spread by one of the leaders of the parliamentary majority, Milan Knežević. Nebojša Medojeivć also spread the narrative about the Islamization of Montenegro and the intention of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Montenegro to increase the percentage of the Islamic population in relation to the domestic majority Christian population of Montenegro. The aforementioned narratives were placed in the media Borba, Alo online, IN4S, as well as in Belgrade tabloids.
After the incident in Zabjelo, the increased activity of right-wing and clerical-nationalist parties, Orthodox brotherhoods, media and online trolls was visible. This contributed to the formation of the so-called street patrols. The participants were mostly in dark clothes, with masks, some with balaclavas and hoods. Persons recognized as members of extremist groups close to the Serbian Orthodox Church and the party of the Speaker of the Parliament Andrija Mandić were particularly active in organization and mobilization. On the eve of the protest, the Podgorica police detained 11 people, nine of whom were minors, who, as announced by the Police Directorate, had intended to come to the protest in front of the Government with balaclavas and torches.
Four well-known activists and politicians participated in an anti-migrant rally in front of the Government of Montenegro, in the center of Podgorica, on October 28. Turks out, Whoever doesn't jump is a Turk, "We don't want migrants, a Turk won't walk around the city," were some of the messages chanted at the rally. The recordings identified two officials of the ruling New Serbian Democracy (NSD) - Goran Milić and Zoran Ušćumlić. As well as local parliamentarians in Podgorica, Milivoje Brković and Boban Radević.
One of the participants in the street patrols that were formed after the events in Zabjelo is the Chetnik voivode and denier of the Srebrenica genocide Slavko Perošević. He is one of the organizers of the memorial service for the first and second Durmitor Chetnik brigades together with the Serbian Orthodox Church at the Podmalinsko Monastery on June 7, 2025. He is also one of the organizers of the event to erect a monument to the Chetnik collaborator and World War II war criminal Pavle Đurišić in August this year. When gathering citizens for a protest walk in Podgorica on October 27, he stated that we are facing the same danger, the same monster that threatens to endanger our children, mothers and women, and that anyone who raises a dirty fist at Montenegro will be met with a sledgehammer blow. The President of Free Montenegro and Head of the Capital City Citizenship Service, Vladislav Dajković, spread the narrative that the arrival of Turkish citizens to Montenegro is not ordinary economic migration, but an organized state project of neo-Ottomanism, claiming that the Turkish world is knocking on Montenegro's door.
The Constitution of Montenegro prohibits any incitement of hatred and intolerance based on national, racial, religious or other personal affiliation. The Criminal Code, Article 370, provides for penalties for public incitement to hatred. The mildest is a fine or imprisonment for up to two years, and the most severe is 10 years if the act was committed by violence, threat, or if it caused serious consequences for the life and health of people or property.
Anti-EU narrative
The escalation of the anti-migrant narrative in Montenegro has acquired a new function. It is being instrumentalized as a lever against European integration. The basic construction is: by joining the EU, the majority of the domestic population will leave, and migrants from Turkey, Azerbaijan and wider Asia will come in their place, with the EU portrayed as a system that encourages the departure of our own and imposes those of others. This framework combines three fears: demographic panic, cultural replacement and loss of sovereignty. In practice, this narrative serves to portray the EU as a source of problems, not solutions, and to discredit the pro-European course as naive, dangerous or treacherous.
Pro-Serbian and pro-Russian pages and accounts on social networks X and Facebook exploited the conflict between foreign nationals and Montenegrin citizens to spread anti-EU narratives and disinformation. The most active page was Srpski Megafon, which published footage from Germany where migrants allegedly hold knives in their hands. The comment on that post read: Will we allow this to happen in Montenegro? In another post, they stated that migrants from Arab countries are carrying out gang rapes and that all this awaits us in Montenegro. In a post from October 25, they stated that upon joining the EU, Montenegro will be populated by Turks, Nepalese and Arabs, and that there will be burglaries, rapes and all kinds of thefts. The pages League of Exceptional Serbs, NGO Serdar and Serbs in Montenegro raised tensions the most. The page League of Exceptional Serbs published a video stating the message that there will be no Turkish world. A video stating that Montenegro will accept migrants from Great Britain, and that anyone who is comfortable with European politics and European migrant values should move with the Turks.
Pro-Russian and pro-Kremlin accounts from abroad, based on the unpleasant scenes from Podgorica, have launched a disinformation campaign with the aim of promoting anti-EU and pro-Russian narratives. Profiles promoting the Kremlin's geopolitical doctrine in the near abroad shared footage from Podgorica in which they claimed that citizens were shouting at migrants that this is not Germany where you can do whatever you want. The key disinformation was based on emotional manipulation, that the reason for the protest was the attack by migrants on girls in Podgorica and the stabbing of several people. The key profiles for spreading these disinformation narratives are MarioZNA, SlavicNetwork, and the profile from Russia nik@seostok, which promotes a radical policy towards migrants. Their posts had over 400 shares and over 200 thousand views on the social network X. The pattern of action is not an isolated case, but part of a broader model of a pro-Kremlin bot and troll network, which uses important events in the region as anti-EU propaganda. Migrant and interethnic incidents are used to promote narratives about EU integration as a threat to identity, security, and social stability.
The mechanism of functioning is simple. First, individual incidents with foreigners (especially when they fit into stereotypes about eastern migrants) are transformed into paradigmatic examples. Every physical attack, every criminal report, every media-attractive scene is framed as an upcoming wave of imported problems. Then follows the message that the EU is pushing for open borders, quotas and resettlement, although the reality of the accession process and the acquis says otherwise. Membership obliges to regulated procedures, strengthening of border management, asylum standards and return agreements, i.e. more controlled, not more chaotic frameworks. The third step of the narrative is emotional simplification: our people will leave because the EU offers jobs abroad, and only foreigners will stay here. This sweeps complex issues of the labor market, productivity, wages and the quality of institutions under the rug. The key strength of this narrative is that it combines real concerns with the wrong causes.
Overton window successfully expanded
The incident in the Podgorica settlement of Zabjelo is a paradigmatic example of how a local security incident, which was essentially of a limited nature, can become a training ground for broader political, ideological and media instrumentalization. In just a few days, the public's focus shifted from the concrete facts of the conflict to emotional narratives that largely shaped the perception of the event. The media, political structures and social media users used the incident to reaffirm existing divisions and create new lines of conflict, turning an individual case into a symbol of the alleged threat to national, religious and cultural identity.
The case of violence in Podgorica and the government's reaction through the introduction of visas for Turks have exposed multiple layers of the problem. First, there is the real security challenge of integrating a large number of foreigners and dealing with criminal elements among them. Second, we have seen a social reaction - some citizens have reached out for self-initiated "justice" that has crossed into the dangerous zone of collective punishment of the innocent. Third, it has turned out that there are political actors willing to add fuel to the fire for the sake of their own interests, without caring about the potential damage to social cohesion and the international reputation of the state.
Clerical nationalist groups, right-wing organizations, and individual political actors saw an opportunity to mobilize supporters through narratives about defending Montenegro from foreigners and the alleged dangers that come with migration. The incident thus served as a catalyst for the spread of hate speech and intolerance, but also as a test of the state’s institutional capacity to respond to such forms of hybrid threats. Instead of using public space to defuse tensions, it became an arena for emotional and political manipulations that mixed nationalist, anti-Islamic, and anti-EU narratives.
The analysis of thematic clusters indicates that the information space was deeply polarized in the days following the incident. The incident in Podgorica clearly shows how different actors, from the media, political structures and social networks, shape their own narratives and turn a single event into a broader political and identity conflict. The event became a powerful catalyst for hate speech in the public space, where certain actors used the incident to spread emotional manipulation and incite intolerance towards foreigners. At the same time, numerous disinformation and manipulative narratives appeared in the digital environment, which further intensified social tensions and deepened divisions in the Montenegrin information space.
The Podgorica event is also an indicator of the successfully expanded Overton Window in Montenegrin society – a process in which radical ideas, hate speech and clerical nationalist messages have gradually normalised and become acceptable in public discourse. Such a shift is the result of years of institutional ignoring of extremist rhetoric, glorification of war criminals and spreading of hatred without any consequences. The consequences of this institutional passivity are now visible through the reaction of a part of society after the incident in Zabjelo, where intolerance towards foreigners and political extremism manifest themselves openly and without institutional condemnation.
This case confirms that Montenegro must urgently strengthen mechanisms for identifying and sanctioning hate speech, as well as invest in education and media literacy of citizens in order to prevent further shifting of the boundaries of socially acceptable discourse. Otherwise, there is a real danger that extremist ideas will become permanently entrenched and develop into a systemic threat to democratic stability and the country's European perspective.
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