Did Moscow Botch a Coup in Montenegro? by Damir Marusic. Montenegro is a tiny country in the Balkans trying to join NATO.

Russia has been particularly irked by the country’s westward lurch, and especially its NATO aspirations. … This feels like a slap in the face to the Kremlin. And it blames the West for delivering it.

Montenegro’s westward drift also sets a kind of uncomfortable precedent for Russia’s best ally in the region, Serbia. … Many Russian expats have made summer homes for themselves in Montenegro — 25 percent of all tourists to Montenegro are Russians, and by some estimates, Russian citizens own 40 percent of the real estate in the tiny Balkan country. …

[I]f … the Russians were in fact involved in a failed coup against a sovereign country trying to align itself with the West, it should give pause to those pundits who still think that a workable equilibrium with the Kremlin is somehow attainable. At the Valdai conference this past week, Russian President Vladimir Putin indicated that he increasingly saw talking to Washington as pointless. With old spies running the Russian state, the conversation appears to be going back into the shadows, where these men are most comfortable.

KGB is gonna KGB.

hat-tip David Archibald