Between Montenegro’s request for assistance in the fight against coronavirus and the sudden assertion of NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg that the alliance has already helped the country, a void has formed.
This was reported by the Serbian edition of News Front.
Two weeks ago, Podgorica requested assistance from the North Atlantic Alliance in the form of medical products. The request was sent to the Euro-Atlantic Disaster Response Coordination Center. Montenegro asked for 5.6 million surgical masks, half a million masks with filters, 6.5 million pairs of gloves, 250 thousand goggles and screens, 336 thousand surgical aprons, etc.
NATO countries have ignored the call for help. The only thing Montenegro received was the proposal of the Netherlands to ensure the delivery of medical products from China.
When the journalists of the Montenegrin publication Pobeda asked Stoltenberg if they should expect anything more from NATO than the Dutch proposal, the Alliance’s Secretary General said that the bloc had already helped Montenegro. It is important to note that the story did not end there. Suddenly, after Stoltenberg’s resonant statement, the Minister of Defense of Montenegro Predrag Boschkovic assured that the requested products are supposedly “not yet needed”.
“After everyone understood that the alliance ignored us, that they couldn’t even answer Montenegro’s request for medical equipment, the Minister of Defense is trying to smooth out the shame,” commented journalist Drazen Zhivkovich.
According to him, this incident revealed an unpleasant and obvious truth: Montenegro is not interested in NATO.