Vuk TesijaZagrebBIRNFebruary 1, 202315:51Croatia’s president Milanovic — who has often crossed swords with his own government — has been added to a Ukrainian website listing Ukraine’s enemies following his latest pro-Russian outbursts on the war in the country.
The President of the Republic of Croatia is blacklisted/Photo:EPA/MARTIAL TREZZINI
The Ukrainian Internet database “Mirtvorec” ( Peacemaker ), which publishes the names and addresses of persons it considers enemies of Ukraine, has placed the maverick President of Croatia, Zoran Milanovic, on its “black list.”
The reason was Milanovic’s recent statements that Ukraine had no place in NATO and that the EU had instigated a “coup d’état” in Ukraine in 2014, which overthrew pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych.
The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry urged the Croatian ambassador in Kyiv, Anica Dzamic, to protest the President’s remarks, which in turn were met with a positive response in Russia.
Mirotvorec also cited President Milanovic’s remark that, “When asked how Croatia will react to the situation in Ukraine, Milanovic said: we have nothing to do with it,” it said, quoting Milanovic.
“Ukraine does not belong to NATO. When Ukraine changed its government, it was a non-democratic movement, it was a coup d’état in which 50 people were killed,” Milanović was quoted saying on Mirotvorec.
The blacklist includes the data on about 4,500 Western, Ukrainian and Russian journalists who were accredited by the pro-Russian separatist authorities in eastern Ukraine, which was a condition for them to work in the territory. Many of them later received threats.
The database was established in 2014 following a meeting between Ukrainian politician George Tuka and a former member of Ukraine’s domestic intelligence service SBU, known only by the pseudonym “Roman Zaitsev”, the London Times said.
“The problem we had then, we still have today. Ex-police officers, ex-soldiers and some political figures still have pro-Russian views. Some have moved to eastern Ukraine or Russia. Some are among us. We had no official database with their names. Peacemaker was created to fill that gap,” Tuka told the Times.
The founder of the music group Pink Floyd, Roger Walters, also ended up there, after declaring three years ago that Russia had more rights to Crimea than Ukraine.
Belarusian writer Svetlana Aleksievich, a Nobel laureate and Kremlin critic, also ended up on the list because she mentioned that some ethnic Ukrainians helped the Nazis persecute Jews in World War II.
BIRN asked the Ukrainian embassy in Zagreb to comment but did not receive a response by the time of publication.
Oleg Nikolenko, the spokesperson for Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry, wrote on Facebook last Tuesday: “I wonder if Zoran Milanovic could have become president of his country with such rhetoric in the 1990s when Croatia was fighting to preserve its statehood? Would his voters have agreed to turn a blind eye to the occupation of parts of their country? I doubt it.”
Nikonenko also commented on Milanovic’s statement: “Crimea will never again be a part of Ukraine”. Russia unilaterally annexed Crimea in 2014, and almost all members of the international community, including Croatia, refuse to recognize it as Russian territory.
On Wednesday, Milanovic drew analogies between breakaway areas of Ukraine and Kosovo, a former province of Serbia detached from Serbia with Western military support.
“The reality is that Russia is trying to do something with Ukraine and the example of Kosovo is like a thorn in its side.
At some point they [Russia] will have to either recognize Kosovo or pretend to recognize it in order to legalize what they are doing in Ukraine. That is the reality,” Milanovic said.
This is not the first time that Milanovic has talked publicly about Ukraine in his own specific way. For this reason, the centre-right government of Croatia distanced itself several times from his statements because they contradict the official policy of the government and Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic.
His recent statements about Kosovo, that “We annexed Kosovo. We and the international community. It was taken from Serbia,” have caused further embarrassment, drawing protests from Kosovo and making him popular in Belgrade.
Source link: balkaninsight.com
