Milanović ministers for undermining the Chief of the General Staff

The Croatian President offered some harsh criticism of the Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister and Deputy Prime Minister and Veterans' Affairs Minister for undermining the Chief of the General Staff of the Croatian Armed Forces.

President Zoran Milanović today commented on the situation surrounding the Chief of the General Staff, Lieutenant General Tihomir Kundid, who has come under attack from government after he blocked Prime Minister Andrej Plenković's plan to have a contingent of Croatian soldiers represented in the July 14th Bastille Day military parade in Paris. The president was especially critical of Interior Minister Davor Božinović and Veteran's Affairs Minister Tomo Medved.

"As a soldier Medved felt no need to stand in his defense out of solidarity - as a brother-at-arms from the war. Instead, as a lowly party lackey, he bullied him. As for Božinović, he surprised me, because it would truly have been better for him to not just stay quiet, but avoid these issues altogether, because he has more skeletons in his closet than a graveyard. In a political sense he's throwing stones in a glass house. And he has the gall to comment on what General Kundid should have done," the president said.

With regard to the Bastille Day parade itself, President Milanović commented on the fact that French protocol sat Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić in the front row, while the Croatian Prime Minister was sat in the second row, calling this unacceptable: "The President of Serbia cannot sit in the front row in front of the Croatian representative. This is not a matter of Serbia, but of state protocol. If this is a European event, then Plenković has no business sitting in the second row. Even if it was an event of the Coalition of the Willing, he still cannot be sitting in the second row, and again, if it is a NATO gathering, Macron still cannot have Plenković sitting behind Vučić."

Milanović went on to say that he had no problem with the fact that French President Emmanuel Macron had invited Vučić, but that he had a problem with the way it was done.

"The French have special accounts with Serbia and they are doing all this as if we do not exist," he said in another obvious allusion to France's sale of Rafale fighter jets to Serbia only months after selling the same aircraft to Croatia.

In total, he characterized the parade in Paris a "private performance" by the outgoing French president, for which many leaders were only too "happy to line up."

President Milanović also linked it to the ongoing war in Ukraine, saying that it was psychological preparation for a conflict with Russia. He stressed however, that Russia does not pose a serious threat to European territory, security, peace, property and lives of citizens, but that a conflict could be provoked.

"The EU has entered a complete lull, a silence. Nothing is happening in the social, economic or cultural sense. It is exclusively engaged in talking about war and financing military production," he said.

Milanović said that Croatia is in a favorable geopolitical situation and that it should benefit from its position instead of rushing headlong into things where no one even notices it.

Source: HRT