Centre for Civic Education (CCE) once again draws attention to the troubling ties maintained by certain members of the Montenegrin Academy of Sciences and Arts (MASA) with structures closely associated with the regime of Vladimir Putin. Such activities undermine Montenegro’s international reputation and are inconsistent with the country’s foreign policy, which is aligned with the foreign and security policy of the European Union.
CCE recalls that it had previously pointed out that Academician Dragan Vukčević, Head of the Lexicographic Centre of MASA, travelled to Moscow from 17 to 21 September 2024 to attend a meeting of the Council of the International Association of Academies of Sciences (IAAS), an organisation closely linked to the regimes in Moscow and Minsk. The meeting was hosted by the Russian Academy of Sciences. Vukčević was elected a member of the IAAS in 2019, and at the 2024 meeting in Moscow he formally received the insignia of IAAS membership.
On 13 May 2026, CCE submitted a request for free access to information to MASA, seeking the draft agenda of the IAAS Council meeting and the accompanying documentation. MASA responded on 2 July 2026, providing the programme and the list of speakers.
The meeting was opened by Vladimir Gusakov, then President of the IAAS and of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, who is known for supporting the Union State of Russia and Belarus, as well as the regimes of Vladimir Putin and Alexander Lukashenko.
The opening remarks were also delivered by Gennady Krasnikov, President of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and Dmitry Mezentsev, then State Secretary of the Union State of Russia and Belarus. In 2024, by decree of Vladimir Putin, Krasnikov was appointed a member of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, the President’s highest advisory body on national security and foreign policy.
The most notorious among the speakers, Dmitry Mezentsev, a Russian politician and diplomat, has long been one of Putin’s close associates and currently serves as the Plenipotentiary Representative of the President of the Russian Federation before the Constitutional Court. He previously served as State Secretary of the Union State of Russia and Belarus and as Russia’s Ambassador to Belarus. In February 2024, seven months before the meeting attended by Dragan Vukčević, Mezentsev was placed under United States sanctions for his personal involvement in organising the forced deportation of children from Ukraine to Belarus during Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, as well as for visiting camps where deported Ukrainian children were being held. At the time, he announced that the Union State would “host” 1,500 children from Ukraine. In June 2024, the European Union also sanctioned Mezentsev on the same grounds, noting that deported civilians are “often denied or impeded safe passage to areas of Ukraine under the control of the Ukrainian authorities” and that his actions “constitute violations of the rights of Ukrainian children and infringe the law and administrative order of Ukraine,” while also “implementing actions and policies which undermine and threaten the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine.” He has also been under Ukrainian sanctions since November 2023.
On 28 June 2023, Belarusian opposition politician and former Minister of Culture Pavel Latushka announced that he had submitted documentation to the International Criminal Court (ICC) which, according to his claims, demonstrated that more than 2,100 Ukrainian children from at least 15 occupied cities had been forcibly transferred to Belarus with the approval of Alexander Lukashenko. Among the published documents was a letter signed by Mezentsev requesting the organisation of the “transport of children” from the occupied territories of eastern Ukraine “for rehabilitation in brotherly Belarus,” citing decisions by the Presidents of Russia and Belarus on providing “humanitarian assistance.”
The participants were also addressed by Mikhail Kovalchuk, Director of the Kurchatov Institute, a Soviet-era nuclear research centre, and an IAAS academician who is regarded as one of the Kremlin’s most influential scientific advisers. He has been under United Kingdom sanctions since 2022 due to his ties to Putin’s regime. His brother Yuri, widely known as Putin’s personal banker, along with other members of the Kovalchuk family, is also subject to UK sanctions.
Among the speakers was also Viktor Sadovnichy, a mathematician born in Ukraine and Rector of Lomonosov Moscow State University since 1992. During Russia’s 2012 presidential election, he was officially registered as a trusted representative of presidential candidate Vladimir Putin. In 2018, he joined the initiative group that nominated Putin for another presidential term and was once again included among his official representatives. The following year, the State Duma adopted amendments allowing the President to reappoint the rectors of Moscow State University and Saint Petersburg State University an unlimited number of times, effectively making Sadovnichy’s tenure dependent on Putin’s discretion. He also initiated the letter signed by rectors of Russian universities expressing support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. He has been under Ukrainian sanctions since June 2022, and in protest over his support for the invasion, honorary doctorates previously awarded to him by universities in Kharkiv, Kyiv and Dnipro were revoked.
These are only some of the senior representatives of the Russian and Belarusian regimes, and their close associates, with whom Dragan Vukčević shared the podium on behalf of MASA, Montenegro’s highest state institution in the fields of science and culture. The 2024 MASA Yearbook also notes that during his stay in Moscow in September 2024, Dragan Vukčević congratulated the Russian Academy of Sciences on the occasion of its 300th anniversary. That same year, legislative amendments established a Board of Trustees for the Russian Academy of Sciences, chaired by Vladimir Putin.
CCE calls on Dragan Vukčević to renounce his membership in the IAAS, as there is no place for Montenegrin academicians in an organisation that brings together and promotes individuals associated with authoritarian and internationally sanctioned regimes. At the same time, we expect MASA to clearly and unequivocally distance itself from this compromised association and to terminate all institutional cooperation with it.
Sara Čabarkapa, Active Citizenship Programme Coordinator