The Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, which Russia took in 2014, will never once more be a part of Ukraine, declared Croatian President Zoran Milanovic in statements outlining his opposition to Zagreb offering military assistance to Kyiv.
Croatian parliament rejected a request to join an EU mission supporting the Ukrainian military in December, revealing profound disagreements between Milanovic and Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic.
Milanovic, a strong opponent of Western policies in Ukraine, has stated that he does not want his nation, the newest member of the EU, to experience what he has called possibly terrible consequences due to the 11-month-old conflict in Ukraine.
How the West is handling Ukraine During a visit to military camps in the eastern town of Petrinja, Milanovic told reporters that Western military assistance for Kyiv “is fundamentally immoral because there is no solution (to the war)”.
He continued by saying that the deployment of German tanks into Ukraine would only push Russia and China closer together.
Crimea will never ever more be a part of Ukraine, Milanovic continued.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the president of Ukraine, has vowed to reinstate Ukrainian control over Crimea, which Russia invaded and annexed in 2014 in a move that was not recognized by the majority of other nations.
A vote that was held after Russian soldiers took the peninsula, according to Russia, revealed that Crimeans truly desire to be a part of Russia. Most nations have not recognized the referendum.
Milanovic criticized Western nations for their “double standards” in international affairs, claiming that Russia will use the “annexation of Kosovo” by the international community as justification for annexing portions of Ukraine.
Milanovic was alluding to Kosovo’s 2008 declaration of independence, which came after a war in which NATO nations bombed the remnants of Yugoslavia, which consisted of Serbia and Montenegro, in order to defend Kosovo’s Albanian majority.
He cautioned that he wasn’t challenging Kosovo’s independence, but rather the idea of Western double standards, saying, “We recognized Kosovo against the will of a state (Serbia) to which Kosovo belonged.”
Former Croatian prime minister Milanovic, a member of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), has adopted an anti-EU stance since assuming the mostly ceremonial position of president, aligning his views with those of Prime Ministers Viktor Orban of Hungary and Milorad Dodik of the Bosnian Serb secessionist movement.
