On November 18, 2025, an article entitled "USTASHA WEDDING IN THE MIDDLE OF PODGORICA: Fans from Croatia glorify blackshirts in front of the police"  was published on the pages of the Montenegrin internet portal Borba, which mentions that Croatian fans in a food facility not far from the City Stadium in Podgorica (Monte Negro) sangang Croatian nationalist and fan songs. Given that this article presents serious accusations against the Republic of Croatia and its role in the Homeland War, we consider it justified to analyze the claims made.

 

Figure 1. Screenshot of the front page of the article in question on the Borba web portal.

Before the analysis itself, it should be pointed out that the Borba internet portal, according to the data of Media Ownership Monitor Montenegro, is registered in Montenegro and has an ownership structure that is close to the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) and Aleksandar Vučić, president of Serbia. In November 2019, the Embassy of the United States of America (USA) in Podgorica (Monte Negro) accused the portal of being under the direct influence of the Kremlin, i.e. the Russian Federation.

The following claims are disputed in the aforementioned article, the veracity of which needs to be verified:

Ad. 1. "USTASHA WEDDING IN THE MIDDLE OF PODGORICA: Fans from Croatia glorify blackshirts in front of the police"...

 

Ad. 2. "We remind you that the Ustashas from Vukovar shot at young soldiers of the Yugoslav People's Army, attacked them in the barracks and committed various crimes against Serbs whom they expelled from their centuries-old hearths..."

Ad. 1. By studying the footage in question , which shows Croatian fans in a catering facility not far from the football stadium Pod Goricom, we can see how the crowd sings the song of the Croatian singer Marko Perković Thompson "If you don't know what it was" , which was created in 2024, which means that it is not from the time (1941-1945) of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH). Most of the gathered people wear official FIFA/UEFA Croatian checkered or dark fan jerseys or are dressed in a fan style, with no recorded extremist and radical right-wing forms of clothing (black shirts with the insignia of the Independent State of Croatia) or the display of insignia from the time of the Independent State of Croatia, which can be clearly seen in the example in Figure 2. It is a typical fan gathering that does not differ in any way from other fan gatherings, which leads us to the conclusion that media attention to this event is unnecessary.

 

Figure 2. Screenshot of video (0:17). Source: Facebook profile Borba.me.

Consequently, it was not about any "Ustasha wedding" or glorification of the "blackshirts", but about singing a song by a Croatian performer using the official Croatian insignia (Croatian flags) with the inscriptions of the places from which the fans come. We have already written about a similar topic  in one of our previous analyses.

Ad. 2. Ustasha is a historical term that refers to persons who were in the service of the Independent State of Croatia (1941-1945) that operated during World War II. This name is not applicable to the participants of the Homeland War in Vukovar. Furthermore, the Homeland War (1991-1995) involved a conflict between Croatian forces and the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) and Serbian paramilitary formations. The Battle of Vukovar began on 25 August 1991 and ended on 18 November 1991 with the fall of the City of Vukovar into the hands of the JNA and Serbian paramilitary formations. Colonel Stjepan Sučić wrote in more detail about the Battle of Vukovar in his paper The Importance of the Defense of Vukovar in the Creation of the Croatian State, and Gordan Akrap and Ivica Mandić in their paper MILITARY INTELLIGENCE ESTIMATES AND STRATEGIC DECISIONS: THE CASE OF VUKOVAR 1991 – 1995. (pp. 301-324).

About 1800 members of the National Guard Corps (ZNG), the Croatian police and volunteers of the Croatian Armed Forces (HOS) who were part of the 204th Croatian Armed Forces (HOS) participated in the defense of the City of Vukovar. Vukovar Brigade. According to the Croatian Medical Headquarters, 450 defenders and 1,350 civilians, including 86 children, were killed during the aggression in Vukovar by November 19, 1991. 858 children were left without one or both parents, more than 2,500 people were wounded, many were detained and taken to one of the Serbian concentration camps, and after the occupation on November 18, 1991, the fate of 2,630 people was unknown. During and after the peaceful reintegration process, more than 50 mass graves were discovered in the city and its surroundings, from which numerous remains were exhumed. 

Furthermore, there is no substantiated evidence to support the claim that Croatian forces carried out an organized attack on JNA facilities and members in the area of Vukovar before the very beginning of the siege of the City of Vukovar on 25 August 1991. Historical data do not indicate that there was a mass campaign of expulsion of Serbs from Vukovar, nor was there any form of organized violence against Serbs living in the area of the City of Vukovar. 

Numerous misinformation  has been created about Vukovar itself  , which is spread in the information space of Croatia and neighboring countries, and which we, as official verifiers of the accuracy of information, are trying to systematically suppress in our analyses and scientific work. Disinformation related to the defense of the City of Vukovar is based on the selective use of historical terms, incorrect linking of events, and politically motivated interpretations that aim to relativize responsibility for war events, especially for committing war crimes (for example, Ovčara) and to incite ethnic tensions, unrest and division. 

The claims presented in the article in question represent a corpus of untrue, malicious, misleading and propaganda narrative that distorts the historical picture of the Republic of Croatia and the Homeland War, and generates intra-social and interethnic divisions that seek to incite ethnic tensions and unrest.