 On 28 April 2017, Montenegro's parliament voted 46-0 to join NATO, while the majority of opposition parties kept boycotting parliament sessions and protesters burned NATO flags outside.Tensions between Montenegro and Russia continued to escalate thereafter.In November 2019, the U.S. Department of Defense-authorized, editorially independent newspaper, "Stars and Stripes", cited the "hybrid attack during [Montenegrin] elections in 2016" as an explanation why the first NATO counter-hybrid warfare team was being deployed to Montenegro.