GLAS representative and former Minister of Foreign Affairs Vesna Pusić stated on Friday that she finds it “hard to understand” the congratulations and invitation from President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović to Russian President Vladimir Putin to visit Croatia, assessing that the President has thereby “put Croatia in an awkward situation”.
“I think we have already reached a stage where we hope that this is just clumsiness, coincidence, lack of coordination, and absence of a common foreign policy, rather than something that is truly a special project,” Pusić told reporters.
>>> The President congratulated Putin with a special emphasis on economic cooperation
She emphasized that the time when the European Council, which includes the Croatian Prime Minister, is discussing solidarity with Great Britain in the case of the poisoning of a former spy and his daughter with chemical weapons on the territory of a member state of the European Union, with which the EU will certainly continue to cooperate closely even after Brexit, is “the worst moment to issue such an invitation”.
Croatia should stick to its allies in the European Union
– Of course, Russia is an important partner for all Union countries and it is important to maintain relations. However, it is also important to have some self-respect as Europe, unity as Europe. Croatia has no other first-circle allies except for the countries of the European Union. We need to stick to those allies, and then the great powers will respect us, rather than in a situation where we have to hope that it is just a lack of coordination and clumsiness, and not the instrumentalization of Croatia at such a moment, Pusić pointed out.
