Plenković: Croatia strongly participates in the economic, financial, humanitarian and political support to Ukraine

The leaders of more than 20 European countries met in Paris today at the invitation of French President Emmanuel Macron to send a message that they are determined to continue supporting Ukraine, two years after the start of the Russian invasion.

Representatives of 27 countries attended the meeting at the Élysée Palace, including Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Polish President Andrzej Duda.

The UK was represented by Foreign Secretary David Cameron, Canada by Defence Minister Bill Blair, and the US by Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs James O'Brien.

In the statement to the media after the meeting, PM Plenković said his speech focused on Croatia's victory in the 1991-95 Homeland War despite unfavourable circumstances.

"That experience is unique and we wish to share it with the Ukrainians. We advocated that for many years, notably from 2014 to 2022. That is the experience of the peaceful reintegration of the Croatian Danube River Region, which we considered the best model for reintegrating the temporarily occupied parts of Ukraine."

The second message was the context of the Russian policy, Plenković said, adding that on the first day of the recent Munich security conference, Russian opposition leader "Alexei Navalny was killed and that message was certainly symbolic also."

"Why on that day? Why just when his wife was in Munich and how does all that reflect on the messages to the West and its policy in relation to Russia?"

Croatia's military assistance to Ukraine is very concrete, operational and useful, Prime Minister Plenković said and added that Croatia has provided that assistance through the government's decisions on a series of occasions already.  

"We tried to focus our military assistance by donating various equipment to the Ukrainian army," Plenković said, adding that Croatia strongly participates also in the economic, financial, humanitarian and political support to Ukraine.

Text: Hina

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