NATO state’s PM calls his president ‘Putin’s poodle’

Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic has lashed out at President Zoran Milanovic over his refusal to contribute troops to NATO’s Ukraine mission, calling him and his administration “Putin’s poodles.”

The potential deployment of Croatian troops to the NATO Security Assistance and Training for Ukraine (NSATU) command – which was established for coordinating military aid to Kiev – has been the subject of fierce debate between Plenkovic and Milanovic for weeks.

Under a support package for Ukraine which NATO leaders agreed on during a summit in July, Zagreb was supposed to send two officers to the 700-strong NSATU staff in Germany to train Ukrainian soldiers. Milanovic, who has limited powers but is the country’s armed forces commander, has been blocking the move, saying it could “draw Croatia into a war.”

Croatia’s ruling coalition planned to challenge the president’s decision, but has so far been unable to hold a vote on the matter in parliament, failing to gain the required two-thirds majority backing.

“They don’t want Croatia to help Ukraine as a victim of Russian aggression and that’s where it all ends, they become Putin’s poodles, which is very bad for Croatian democracy, they are destroying it this way,” Plenkovic said on Tuesday, referring to Milanovic and his administration. The prime minister claimed that the president is “manipulating” the nation with warnings of the move’s potential threat to national security and Croatia’s credibility as a NATO member. He slammed the debate over contributing personnel to NATO’s Ukraine mission as a “search for an alibi for supporting Russia.”

Plenkovic’s comments prompted a renewed debate among lawmakers, with MP Marijan Pavlicek saying he “looked more like the prime minister of Ukraine than Croatia” with his insistence on involving Croatian troops in NATO’s Ukraine mission.

NATO’s acting deputy secretary general, Boris Ruge, visited Zagreb in late October to help resolve the political row. He said at the time that the NSATU would not send any NATO troops to Ukraine, and reiterated the US-led bloc’s earlier assurances that aiding Kiev’s war effort does not actually make it a party to the conflict with Russia. Milanovic, however, reiterated that the move would be “out of bounds for Croatian national interests.”

Milanovic has long been critical of NATO’s policy of arming Ukraine to fight Russia, calling the conflict a NATO proxy war against Moscow. However, Croatia’s right-wing government has been sending military aid to Kiev since 2023. The Defense Ministry announced in late October that it will send dozens of older tanks and infantry fighting vehicles to Ukraine in exchange for a discount on the purchase of Leopard 2 tanks from Germany.