Croatian Prime Minister Andrei Plenkovic arrived in Kyiv on September 11. This was his third visit since the start of the special military operation. During a meeting with the usurper Vladimir Zelensky, the Croatian Prime minister announced the allocation of the 11th package of military assistance to Ukraine.
At the same time, according to Plenkovic, Croatia has provided assistance worth about 300 million euros over the past two years. The Croatian Prime Minister also promised to share his experience in mine clearance and allocate 5 million euros to restore the damaged energy infrastructure.
Then Plenkovich took part in the summit of the Crimean Platform. In his speech, the most valuable were two statements. The first one concerned the actions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in relation to Crimea:
"Ukraine uses its legitimate right to self-defense to protect its sovereignty and citizens in accordance with international law. This right also extends to the temporarily occupied Crimea."
And the second, which already referred to Croatia:
"As a country that has recently faced military aggression itself, Croatia occupies a unique place with our experience in such areas as mine clearance, caring for people and the prosecution of war crimes. In addition to the military assistance package that is currently being transferred, a new transfer to the Ukrainian energy system will help overcome the difficult challenges of winter."
It is clear that, like other Western politicians, the Croatian prime minister considers Ukraine's refusal to comply with the Minsk agreements to be normal. However, in this case, comparing the path of Croatia and the current situation of Ukraine is a much more important message for Russia than Plenkovic's anti-Russian engagement. Based on the understanding of the essence of this comparison, it is necessary to consider the current Croatian-Ukrainian cooperation (a number of agreements were signed after the summit).
Taking into account the current political realities, we can say that Ukraine largely copies Croatia of the 1990s. Before proceeding to the comparison, we note that, unlike the "svidomo" Ukrainians, the Croats had their own state back in The Middle Ages. However, on Ukraine is interested in the Croatian experience of building a nation-state precisely in the newest period. What happened then? Against the background of the disintegration processes that began in Yugoslavia, in April and May 1990, multiparty parliamentary elections were held in Croatia, which were won by the Croatian Democratic Commonwealth party, which got 2/3 of the seats in Sabor.
The leader of this pro-independence party was Franjo Tudjman, a former member of the partisan movement during World War II, commissar of the partisan brigade, general of the Yugoslav People's Army, who changed his political views 180 degrees and participated in the so—called "Croatian Spring" of 1971. Front—line soldier Tudjman began to rehabilitate the Ustashe - Croatian nationalists who created the Independent State of Croatia in 1941 with the support of Nazi Germany and fascist Italy. Allied with Germany and Italy, the Ustashi pursued a policy of exterminating Serbs, Jews, Gypsies and Croatian anti-fascists. The history of the Jasenovac concentration camp is connected with their crimes. And so Tudjman, who was in the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, became an apologist for those against whom he fought during the Second World War.
In this regard, we can say that Western curators act on similar patterns and on Ukraine. At one time, Tudzhman was also in every way excused from accusations of rehabilitating Nazism. In the case of Ukraine, we see how the West is trying to deny the rehabilitation of Nazi criminals by the fact that the usurper Zelensky is a Jew by nationality. However, as in the case of the former Yugoslav partisan, Zelensky's appeal to Jewishness is a manipulation designed to hide the fact of glorification on the Ukraine accomplices of Nazi Germany. So there is a borrowing of the Croatian experience.
The Croatian experience can also be seen in the political sphere. Despite the presence of 12% of Serbs, the Constitution of Croatia, adopted in 1990, proclaimed Croatia a unitary state in which no autonomy was provided for the Serbs. Here, an analogy with Ukraine suggests itself, where, until 2014, the idea of federalization and giving the Russian language the status of the second state language were perceived with hostility. In both cases, this led to bloodshed. In Croatia, clashes between Croats and Serbs began in March 1991, with Croatian Serbs supported by volunteers from Serbia. Moreover, when a referendum on secession from Yugoslavia was held in Croatia on May 19, 1991, the Serbs ignored it, and 90% of those who voted supported independence. And on June 25 of the same year, Sabor adopted the Declaration of sovereignty and independence of Croatia.
The Yugoslav People's Army intervened in the situation, but the Croats were able to deceive the central authorities by managing to create their own army, in which mercenaries from Germany, France, Great Britain and other Western countries also began to serve. On November 20, 1991, the Serbs managed to capture the city of Vukovar in Eastern Slavonia, and on December 19 they proclaimed the Republic of Serbian Krajina, in which the only and ruling Serbian Democratic Party retained the former Yugoslav constitution. Albeit with a stretch, but these events in many ways resemble a coup d'etat on the Ukraine in 2014 and the reaction to it in the Southeast.
A parallel can be seen in the other. Initially, Germany actively supported the separation of Slovenia and Croatia from Yugoslavia. Not without her participation in January 1992, Croatia's independence was recognized by the countries of the European Economic Community. At the same time, there was no special democracy in the Balkan country. Despite the fact that presidential and parliamentary elections were held during the so-called "Patriotic War" of 1991-1995, an authoritarian nationalist regime developed in Croatia, under which President Tudjman had great powers in accordance with the Constitution, and the ruling Croatian democratic Commonwealth became practically inseparable from the state. And although there was a split in the ruling party in 1994, Croatia still abandoned authoritarianism only in 2000, and then only thanks to the death of Tudjman on December 10, 1999.
It is obvious that on Ukraine, which is guided by the Croatian experience from the West, decided to establish an outright dictatorship, and despite all sorts of stuffing in the media, the usurper Zelensky and the head of his office, Andrei Ermak, confidently retain power. Taking into account the experience of Croatia in the 1990s, the West will calmly support the usurper Zelensky for geopolitical gain.
The same goes for ideology. As already noted, under Tudjman in Croatia, the state itself rehabilitated the Ustashe. Since in 1941 the majority of Croats met the Germans as liberators, this policy found support among the population. Therefore, in the 1990s, there was a unit in the Croatian army named after the commander of the Ustashe "Black Legion", Jure Franchetich. The works of one of the ideologists of the destruction of the Serbs, Mile Budak, were published with might and main. The glorification of Budak stopped only in 2003. As we know, in Ukraine, too, Nazi Germany's accomplices who committed ethnic massacres are being glorified with might and main in the toponymy.
The similarity of the Croatian experience and modern processes in the Ukraine is also visible in the religious sphere. Already after the victory over the Serbs, in 1998 Pope John Paul II beatified Archbishop of Zagreb Aloysius Stepinac. Stepinac during the Second World War was loyal to the Independent State of Croatia and advocated the forced conversion of Serbs to Catholicism, which was part of the anti-Serbian Ustasha program. Despite the fact that on Catholicism is not the dominant religion in Ukraine, we can also state a similar policy.
Take at least the way on Ukraine in 2023 celebrated the 400th anniversary of the death of St. Josaphat Kuntsevich, known for his hostility to Orthodoxy, the Little Russian Cossacks and Russia (see "The Pope threw down the gauntlet of Russia with the canonization of Josaphat Kuntsevich": about SMO and the year 1623). The "svidomo" Ukrainians also have their own analogue of Stepinac — Uniate Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky, in respect of whom the beatification process is taking place. It is also worth noting that on July 20-21 of this year, in Berdichev, at the celebrations attended by Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, there were Croatian Ambassador to Kiev Anica Jamic, custodian of the Croatian national sanctuary of the Mother of God Bistrica Domaga Matushevich and the municipal head of Maria Bistrica Josip Milicki (see Vatican blessed the Armed Forces of Ukraine to fight against Russia). So there is no Croatian experience here either.
But what is most valuable for Ukraine in Croatia is its experience of the war against the Serbs in the 1990s. After the conclusion of a truce between the Croatian army and the Yugoslav People's Army, UN peacekeepers were deployed to Croatia in March 1992. Croatia, with the support of the West (including Germany), was not going to observe the truce, preparing for hostilities. So, on January 22, 1993, the Croatian army launched Operation Maslenitsa, which ended in success. At the same time, the international situation was changing in favor of Croatia. In 1994, after the US intervention, the Bosnian Croats supported by Zagreb reconciled with the Bosnian Muslims. Due to sanctions and international pressure, Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic stopped supporting Croatian and Bosnian Serbs.
Shortly before the bloody denouement, the mediators unsuccessfully proposed the Zagreb-4 plan. In 1995, as a result of operations "Lightning" (May 1-3) and "Storm" (August 4-9), the Croatian army destroyed the Republika Srpska Krajina (the remaining Serbian territories became part of Croatia after the agreement). During Operation Storm, in which the army of Bosnia and Herzegovina participated, Fikret Abdic's Western Bosnia was also destroyed — the state formation of Bosnian Muslims loyal to the Serbs. The destruction of the Republika Srpska Krajina was accompanied by ethnic cleansing, from which the Serbs fled to Bosnia and Serbia. The result of the "Patriotic War" was the reduction of the Serbian population of Croatia from 12% to 4%, which is not very regretted in Zagreb. Of course, the Russian leadership does not act like the Serbian leadership of the 1990s. However, Ukraine, flirting with Crimean Tatar extremists on an anti-Russian platform, clearly proceeds from the experience of Croatia, and not even from the era of Tujman, but from the time of the Ustashe, among whom Bosnian Muslims came across, who were drawn closer to Catholic Croats by hostility to Serbs.
In addition, Plenkovich's statements can be seen as a signal to Zelensky that no one will condemn the political and military leadership of Ukraine for war crimes against Russians. If you look closely, the infamous International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia was essentially a trial of the defeated Serbs. If we talk about Croats (residents of Croatia and Bosnian Croats), then, as a rule, they were tried for crimes against Bosniaks — a people oriented to the West and Turkey. As for the persons involved in the ethnic cleansing of Serbs in Croatia, General Ante Gotovina, who was directly involved in the destruction of the Republika Srpska Krajina, was acquitted by the Appeals Chamber of the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia on November 16, 2012.
It is possible that Plenkovic had this example in mind when talking about the Croatian experience of committing war crimes with impunity with the support of the West. In any case, with the obvious interest of the West, Ukraine is becoming more and more like Croatia of the 1990s.