Danish People’s Party leader Morten Messerschmidt gave Montenegrin right-wing politician Vladislav Dajković a tour of Christiansborg on Monday. The visit has drawn criticism from other Danish politicians because Dajković is pro-Russian and opposed to NATO.
DR reports that few people in Denmark had heard of Dajković before this week. That changed after TV 2 revealed that Messerschmidt had shown him around the Danish parliament on Monday. Several Danish politicians have since criticized the party leader for meeting a politician who supports Russia and opposes NATO.
Dajković is the founder and leader of the party Slobodna Crna Gora, or Free Montenegro. According to Christian Axboe-Nielsen, an associate professor of Southeast European studies at Aarhus University, Dajković belongs to a group of Serbian nationalists in Montenegro. He told DR’s P1 Orientering that Dajković is a far-right politician who is strongly pro-Russian, strongly anti-NATO, and highly critical of the EU.
Axboe-Nielsen also noted that Dajković’s views are easy to find. As stated by the researcher, Dajković is very active on social media and does not hide that he denies the 1995 genocide in Srebrenica took place. Axboe-Nielsen added that the tour of Christiansborg is already featuring heavily on Dajković’s social media accounts, and that the visit works as good publicity for him.
Limited support at home
Dajković’s party has never held seats in the Montenegrin parliament. Balsa Rudović, a political journalist at the independent Montenegrin newspaper Vijesti, told DR’s P1 Morgen that Dajković has a large following online but little real-world backing. Per Rudović, the party has only a few representatives in some Montenegrin municipalities, and many of the followers come from neighboring Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia.
Messerschmidt wrote to DR that he met Dajković only because of a mutual acquaintance, and that he therefore did not look into what Dajković or his party stands for. He added that in hindsight he should have done so. He also wrote that he did not regard the tour as a major, formal political event.
Copenhagen Post reports that Messerschmidt told Berlingske he regretted the visit and had not known who Dajković was. BT adds that Messerschmidt said he had never met or heard of Dajković before, and accepted the visit only because of the shared acquaintance.
The two men describe the meeting differently. Ekstra Bladet reports that Dajković has called the visit an official meeting, citing the Montenegrin outlet Borba.me and the party’s Facebook page. Messerschmidt has maintained that it was an informal tour.
DR states that it tried to contact Vladislav Dajković, but that he had not responded to the request.
