Milo Đukanović

Biography

Milo Đukanović was born in Nikšić in 1962 and joined the League of Communists of Yugoslavia in 1979, while still at school. He graduated in tourism economics from the university in Titograd in 1986 and rose quickly through the party's youth bodies, becoming the youngest member of its Central Committee in 1988. With Momir Bulatović he helped lead the 1989 'anti-bureaucratic revolution' that replaced Montenegro's leadership with allies of Slobodan Milošević.

In February 1991, aged 28, he became prime minister of Montenegro, and his government took part in the attack on Dubrovnik that year. From 1996 he broke with Milošević and turned towards Montenegrin statehood and the West, splitting the ruling Democratic Party of Socialists and narrowly defeating Bulatović in the 1997 presidential election. As president from 1998 to 2002 he introduced the Deutsche Mark and kept Montenegro apart from Belgrade's policies.

He led the party from 1998 and returned as prime minister in 2003, leading the campaign that won the 2006 independence referendum and briefly serving as the new state's first defence minister. He held the premiership again in 2008-2010 and 2012-2016, steering Montenegro towards NATO, which it joined in 2017, and the European Union. Italian prosecutors investigated him over cigarette smuggling, but he was shielded by immunity.

Elected president again in 2018, he saw his party lose power in the 2020 parliamentary election. He was defeated by Jakov Milatović in the 2023 presidential run-off and stepped down as party leader in April 2023, ending more than three decades at the top of Montenegrin politics.