The previous issue was almost entirely dedicated to how we are intricately digging up the ground at the site of the future libertarian settlement so that it remains drier during the rainy season. I would prefer to continue talking about such domestic trifles, but since then, you know, a war has broken out.
Crisis centers to assist Ukrainian refugees were deployed in several cities in Montenegro. Volunteers from our project took an active part in the work of the Bar center. In Budva, a participant of the Montelibero project began helping refugees obtain residence permits on a pro bono basis. We also attempted to send humanitarian aid to Ukraine, primarily medications, but it was unsuccessful: too many borders and bureaucratic hurdles; such things would be easier to handle from countries bordering Ukraine.
Sanctions have greatly complicated life not only for those who remain in Russia feeding Putin’s regime with taxes, but also for those who moved to more decent places in advance. For instance, it has become much harder for us to transfer Russian investments to Montenegro to finance construction, and those of us who worked remotely for Russian companies faced both a sharp decrease in income in euro equivalent due to the fall of the ruble, and additional commissions to turn rubles on Russian bank cards into euro cash. EURMTL — our internal euro stablecoin — is also creaking, since its main feature was always free conversion between tokens and euro cash, and now, apparently, we will not be able to avoid the appearance of cash-out fees.
Another direct consequence of the war was that many project participants, who had previously been slowly planning their move to Montenegro, were forced to urgently speed up and rush here in haste. In one month, the size of the Montenegrin libertarian community doubled, and now there are more than forty of us here. Gathering everyone together in some cafe became impossible, so we rented a separate pavilion that had stood abandoned since the time of Covid and began to tidy it up. Now we have a place for meetings, and soon we plan to start giving lectures on libertarianism there. This is quite relevant because we have already become quite noticeable to the local Russian-speaking diaspora, and people are keenly interested in who we are and what motivates us. In the good old days, when the activity of the libertarian party was flourishing in Russia, in no Russian city with a population of 20,000 people (like Bar) or even 40,000 people (counting Budva) did the number of libertarian activists even come close to four dozen, so we have already created a concentration of libertarians higher than it ever was anywhere in the RF, and this is only the beginning. Forgive me, I’m starting to sound like Svetlov, I need to tone down the pathos.
Despite all the problems described above, construction in the Montelibero settlement continues. Utilities are being laid throughout the site: sewage pipes and channels for everything else: water pipes, cables, and so on.
We are waiting for the results of the parcelization to finally be reflected in the state cadastre so that the land can be divided among the co-owners, but the Montenegrin state is an exceptionally slow thing. It is possible that the first houses will begin to be built even before the property rights to the plots are fixed.
It is still unclear whether a delegation from us will go to Liberticon, but we have agreed with the organizers to place our advertisements, and we also asked one of the Russian expat-libertarians living in the Czech Republic to present our project.
In short, now even the complete closure of the borders with Russia will not stop us; the foundation is already sufficient to continue growing without the influx of new Russian immigrants. But a nuclear war in Europe, perhaps, could seriously damage our plans; we would like to do without it.