Ukraine – Croatia, the War, and the Future

Crimea Platform Summit Sticks A Flimsy Band-Aid On Croatian Government Corruption Woes

October 28, 2022 by inavukic 9 Comments

_{Often like two ships passing in the night!} _{Front: Croatia’s President Zoran Milanovic, Back: Croatia’s Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic. Photo: HINA}

That Croatia appears to have irretrievably lost its plot as a whole country standing united without a major shift in governing political parties has shockingly been proven last week, yet again. This is not the Croatia thousands lost their lives for in the 1990’s Homeland War, fighting off the Serb aggression despite UN arms embargo being imposed against it. Croatia was so very fortunate to have had its strong diaspora standing by and participating significantly in the efforts to secede from communist Yugoslavia and develop a true, fully functional democracy. Overwhelming corruption inherited from that communist totalitarian regime still plunders and fleeces national wealth and standard of living for the people.

Four former and recent government ministers have been arrested for fraud and corruption and yet Andrej Plenkovic’s Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) government in coalition with the Serbian ethnic minority SDSS (Independent Democratic Serbian Party) still stands! The opposition insists the government should be ousted, snap elections held, and the government representatives keep on ignoring such civilised and democratic rules of engagement in leading a nation – and so does the EU authority, creating thus huge mistrust in the Union among the populous.

The four former government ministers indicted last week are: Darko Horvat, Josip Aladrovic and Tomislav Tolusic from the Croatian Democrtatic Union Party and Boris Milosevic, former deputy Prime Minister to Plenkovic from the Independent Democratic Serb Party.

_{Indicted Recent Croatian Government Ministers from Left:} _{Darko Horvat, Boris Milosevic, Tomislav Tolusic and Josip Aladrovic. Photo: Cropix}

Darko Horvat, as the first indicted, is accused of having, when he was Minister of Economy, allocated grants to entrepreneurs and companies out of personal interest and at the instigation of the co-suspects Boris Milosevc and Tomislav Tolusic, and that he thus illegally allocated 2 million and 600 thousand kunas state budget funds. Josip Aladrovic, on the other hand, is accused of favouring the employment of two people while he was at the head of the pension insurance institute. In addition to the former ministers, the indictment includes four other suspects.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg of corruption and nepotism that goes on in Croatia. It all begs the question: who is in whose pocket to permit such horrible governance and governing of the country with no end of this nightmare in sight.

“The indictments (against four of his recent government ministers and a deputy Prime Minister) are not a burden for the Government,” said haughtily Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic. The self-importance this man appears to nurture is staggering and repulsive.

The president of the HDZ Members of Parliament Club, Branko Bacic, said last Wednesday, after the announcement that four former members of Plenkovic’s Government were indicted, that his party does not accept the thesis of HDZ’s collective responsibility for the eventual criminal responsibility of an individual.

What a dangerous politician, what a dangerous government. The Party is not the issue here, but the government and governance are. HDZ had several mandates in government during the past three decades and just like the Social Democratic Party (SDP) governments has done nothing to root out corruption, or most of it anyway, starting with the grassroots of government, the local government all the way up to the state level. In any decent democracy the government would fall overnight.

When talking of the opposition I venture to say that all left-leaning political parties in parliament, and there are a few, are splinters off the former communist regime and all appear to have members at the help who were in Social Democratic Party government. Hence, no qualification to lead Croatia were new general elections to come before mid-2024. There are a few solid opposition parties and individuals who lean towards the centre-right that could emerge, finally, as winners and the coming twenty or so months may well weed out the hopeless ones from the promising ones. What Croatia needs most is a political party at the helm that will weed out corruption and nepotism via installing mechanisms of control and audits at all levels. That can only be done, in my view, by those who are squeaky clean of corruption and nepotism, otherwise the gut-wrenching circus will continue until more and more young people abandon Croatia.

And then, as if this was not enough to demonstrate the political disarray and governance shambles Croatia is portraying, the First International Parliamentary Platform on Crimea Summit was held during the week in Zagreb and Croatia’s President Zoran Milanovic snubbed it, avoided it like the plague so to speak – while Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic played the host to it. The Summit provided a perfect mask and coverup for the deplorable latest cases of corruption Plenkovic’s government should be held accountable for.

_{First International Parliamentary Summit on the Crimea Platform held in Zagreb, Croatia, October 25, 2022 Photo: HINA}

While the purpose of the Ukraine-initiated consultation and coordination Summit has its eye on taking Crimea from Russia and return it to the Ukrainian fold Croatian President Milanovic commented: “I see a lot of cynicism and dishonesty toward the Ukrainian people and the war, and I do not want to contribute to that. In the end, Americans and Russians will have to sit at the table because they are waging a proxy war over Ukraine and the Ukrainian people are paying a terrible price for it. I don’t know why no one dares to say this openly, but that’s the truth.”

Speakers and members of parliament from around 40 countries gathered in Croatia’s capital Zagreb on Tuesday 25 October to condemn Russia’s war in Ukraine. Serbia failed to respond to the invitation to the Summit and some media ascribe this to instructions received from Russia for Serbia to avoid the Summit. The speaker of the House of Representatives of the US Congress, Nancy Pelosi, attended the Summit.

Co-hosted by speakers of the Ukrainian and Croatian Parliaments, the summit was addressed via video link by Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi.

Russia has continued to refrain from any dialogue on the subject ever since its conception in August/September 2021 in Kiev, while elsewhere firmly stating that Russia’s “sovereignty” over Crimea is undeniable, and now also over the territories of Eastern Ukraine it occupied via brutal aggression and organised sham referendums recently on seceding from Ukraine in favour of Russia. Vladimir Putin constant firm stand is that Crimea will not be a matter of discussion and that the occupied parts of Eastern Ukraine are now Russian territory. There is a very little doubt that Ukraine`s president seriously counted on a different response from Moscow, but nevertheless, Zelenskyy was not put off by this lack of success and pursues the issues, hence having ended up with a Summit attended by an impressive number of nations, mainly NATO members.

While it seems very dubious that Crimea is to return to Ukraine any time soon (or ever) given Russia`s military onslaught in Ukraine and determination to strengthen its sway over Crimea and Ukrainian occupied territories, the best-case scenario is that the platform could transform into a major irritant for Russia that spells no peace and stability for a long time. This said, if this scenario indeed materialises further, and the Second Summit is planned for 2023, the Crimea Platform most likely will be used by more powerful parties/countries for their own purposes as a tool to apply pressure on Russia, if and when necessary, and to excuse and blame their own inadequacies in governing their own countries on the Russia-Ukraine War. This will leave Ukraine as a bystander, at best, and, at worst, as a loser. The Western politicians have already started covering up their incompetencies and blaming everything that is going wrong on Russia, such as energy crises, living costs increases, economic downturns … No wonder Andrej Plenkovic’s incompetent government has hopped onto this bandwagon and the abyss of ridding Croatia of corruption and nepotism seems to be plummeting deeper than before Russia started “copping” the blame for everything. Something must give in Croatia. The sheer weight of corruption, theft and nepotism scandals erupting almost weekly is becoming too heavy. Ina Vukic

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Andrej PLenkovic, Boris Milosevc, Croatia, Croatian Government Ministers corruption, Darko Horvat, economic crisis, First International Parliamentary Summit on Crimean Platform, Josip Aladrovic, Nancy Pelosi, nepotism, Tomislav Tolusic, Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Zoran Milanovic

“The world knows what Serbian government is”

March 13, 2022 by inavukic 4 Comments

Conversation with former deacon of the Serbian Orthodox Church Bojan Jovanovic

_{Bojan Jovanovic}, _{PHOTO: Screenshot Project Velebit}

Serbia is shamelessly standing close to Russia at this time of the brutal Russian aggression against Ukraine and as I said in one of my previous blogs such a support would, in their eyes, feed well into Serbia’s own denials of its brutal aggression in 1990’s against Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. On the one hand Serbia holds its arm extended to the EU for membership and with the other hand it reaches out to Russia, which reeks of opposition to EU and NATO! Well, Serbian government and the Serbian Orthodox Church have always been like peas in a pod, working in unison on matters of politics and political operations so I decided to look for credible texts and opinions regarding this and found this interview with Bojan Jovanovic. I trust you will learn much from this interview.

Interviewer: Davor Dijanović

Interview in the Croatian language first published on March 11, 2022, on the Croatian Cultural Council portal

Translation of the interview into English: Ina Vukic

“It seems that the citizens of Serbia, no matter how intimately they want to become part of the European Union, every day they are one step further away from that desire and, that idea. The biggest obstacle are the choices they constantly make of people in whose hands they place their destiny. The choices are about the elite that despises human dignity, and that contempt seems to be a patriotic obligation” – says the former deacon of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Bojan Jovanovic, with whom we spoke briefly.

What class or layer of Serbian society governs Serbia?

Serbia is run by disguised UDBA agencies (TN: Former Communist Yugoslavia State Security Services), guided solely by their own interests. They have introduced a kind of soft dictatorship with which they affirm content that sounds nice to the ears, but in this way they lead citizens to the acceptance of seemingly simple solutions, when, in fact, it is about accepting sheer despotism. With this despotism, individuals create a compromise to their own detriment only to later wonder why things are the way they are for them.

The (TN: self-proclaimed) “heavenly people” seem to be in a kind of collective paranoia, and everything described leads that people into a vicious circle from which it is difficult to get out. In it, it is increasingly more difficult to present arguments of formed opinions, and it is especially difficult to fight against something that you consider already defeated. There is no way forward in Serbia until we realise that we are waging the wrong war. The war we should be waging should be a war of liberation from various people who are opportunely patriotic, but who are well trained in waging a profiteering battle against their own people.

What is the role of the Serbian Orthodox Church in such a gloomy state of Serbian society that you describe?

If you look at the history of the Serbian Orthodox Church, which lives a legacy of a kind of peasant piety, you will realise that this is the biggest opposition to the Serbian Orthodox Church’s positive changes. The clergy of the Serbian Orthodox Church largely live a life that does not suit them, and therefore the key question is: is the Serbian Orthodox Church at all what it should be. That is, is it the church that its pious believers want. The Serbian Orthodox Church ignores the fact that, like all of us, it has its ups and downs and that all members of its clergy know how to make mistakes. It would be Christian to admit it and repent. God is merciful. But it is not Christian to continue living in sin. Unfortunately, many members of the SOC hierarchy do what is diabolical, disgusting and carries with it the stench of abuse of power and status. The assessment mark for such (in) humanity and “Christianity” is “sit down, fail!”

With its behaviour, the Serbian Orthodox Church allows people beyond God’s and human laws to be role models for children and participates in creating chaos by combining psychosis and false hopes for a better life. The Serbian Orthodox Church is flying on the wings of the world to which it should have said “goodbye” a long time ago. It, as such, cannot be a messenger in the fields of the Lord.

Does the Serbian Orthodox Church have a role in the so-called Serbian world project?

The group of “adventurers” has been ravaging Serbia for decades and does not understand the time in which it lives. They did not even remotely dream that they would land in the Belgrade pashadom and that they would fall from their hard stance to begging for crumbs. From all that they could show, they only demonstrated that their fear is eternal. Because of this petty fear, fear for their own positions, they had to put the sword back in its sheath, that is, stop sending other people’s children to their deaths, and now they are silent like bugs. Despite this, they sometimes scream, especially when kneeling with their bare knees on corn. The world knows that the Serbian government is a dog that would like to bite even when you feed it.

Through several decades of compromising the clergy linked to pedophilia scandals and other criminal activities, the Serbian Orthodox Church has fallen into the hands of political adventurers who can return the church to the margins of society with the help of a pen. In addition to becoming the main beacon of the political project of the so-called Serbian world, the Serbian Orthodox Church, with its destructive activities, is causing problems for the entire region by abusing God’s mission. Its connections with criminal groups should also be examined in detail, and more and more people are writing and talking about it.

Now the Serbian Orthodox Church is a destructive element, a kind of paramilitary political institution whose main goal is to deny the statehood, ethnic and cultural heritage of other peoples, as well as to deny and humiliate every feature of others.

I don’t think there is a place in the world where one religious community does not respect the other and rejects the worldly government in the country in which it operates. This was first of all felt by Montenegro, partly by Bosnia and Herzegovina, and almost by Croatia. Fortunately, the Serbian Orthodox Church is recognised as the infrastructure of the criminal Greater Serbia project of the Serbian world, and very soon its work will find itself under an attack by the public and relevant institutions in those countries.

Porphyry in Zagreb, Porphyry in Belgrade. The same person or?

Serbia is constantly going downhill, there is no stabilisation. With the “Porphyry” project, the Serbian Orthodox Church is even further from spiritual catharsis and renewal because, like some disaster, it brought in a huge amount of sediment in a very short time.

Porphyry’s message to both Zagreb and Belgrade is that we can agree on everything in Christian love, but only if it suits him and his family. The choosing of Porphyry had as its goal the rehabilitation of the defeated movements and the denying their crimes. Porphyry is not a dove of peace. He is a mini project of Aleksandar Vucic. A black stain in the black history of the SOC. The only fortune for both Serbia and the entire region is that he will soon be the former patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church. Political and other winds that are now blowing in the direction of Serbia from the West promise rapid changes, especially in the Serbian Orthodox Church.

What is the attitude of the Serbian Orthodox Church towards the Russian Orthodox Church and its activities?

The Russians and the Russian Orthodox Church in fact despise the traitors of the betrayed state and treat Serbia, the Serbian government, and the Serbian Orthodox Church accordingly. They use our shame to destabilise the Balkans and achieve their goals.

On the other hand, the Serbian Orthodox Church is trying to be better in its profession, and its profession is subservience to the corruption of the Serbian government. This subservience is an attempt to justify all the shame and socially immature situations. Fraternal hand licking, especially the Russian one, is an attempt to survive for as long as possible and so on until a new opportune moment and a new legal and political framework. In a word, we give you submissiveness and cowardice, you give us the “wisdom” with which you can always mobilise us for some new hell.

What is the Serbian Orthodox Church attitude towards the Russian aggression against Ukraine?

Instead of seeking justice for the victims, all of whom are victims of the war started by Russia, the Serbian Orthodox Church, with its hypocritical silence and other actions, has stood by its powerful protector from whom it evidently receives its glaze. A large part of the clergy of the Serbian Orthodox Church is driven by a desire for power, a desire for domination over man. This borders on psychological disorder.

A few days ago, Porphyry stated that the Serbian Orthodox Church is collecting aid for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, and in fact that aid will end up in the hands of the Russian Metropolitan in Kyiv. The Serbian Orthodox Church does not recognise the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which became the Autocephalous Tomos of the Ecumenical Patriarch, it only recognises the part that is under the Russian paw.

In conclusion, I can say that the Serbian Orthodox Church is an organisation that works against the interests of its people and state. It is terrible that this sick ideology is being legalised within state bodies. Numerous documents testify to the grave manipulations and atrocities of part of the Serbian Orthodox Church. In a civilised society, such atrocities would be promptly sanctioned. Considering that this will not happen in Serbia for political and other reasons, the Serbian Orthodox Church will have to go through a kind of pedagogical awareness due to the pressure of the surrounding world. The world knows what the Serbian government is.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Bojan JOvanovic, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Communist YUgoslavia State Security UDBA, Croatia, Croatian Cultural Council, Davor Dijanovic, Greater Serbia politics, HKV, Montenegro, Russian aggression, Russian Orthodox Church, Serbia, Serbian Orthodox Curch, Ukraine, UKranian Orthdox Curch

Russia’s Motives Unscrupulous In Labeling EU With Neo-Nazi Elements

June 10, 2015 by inavukic 52 Comments

Front Page of Russia’s Report May 2015

Foreign Affairs ministry of the Russian Federation has on 4 May, to mark the 70th anniversary of victory over fascism, published a report titled “Neo-Nazism – a dangerous threat to human rights, democracy and the rule of law” in which it sharply criticises the strengthening of right-wing and nationalistic political movements in Europe and some NATO countries outside the EU and expresses objections towards the European authorities for not having the will-power to increase repressive methods towards such movements.

Well, such a document is not surprising. I mean, Russia was not likely to mark the 70th anniversary of victory over fascism by addressing circa 36 million of innocent victims of communist fascism under Stalin and after him.
The introduction states: “The present report of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation is primarily aimed at demonstrating current situation with the spread and potential consequences of the neo-Nazi threat in a number of countries. It is focused on the most outstanding and obvious tendencies in this sphere that pose extreme threat to the stability and security of the world order.

The report consists of three chapters. The first describes global neo-Nazi tendencies in a number of countries and demonstrates how they contradict international legal obligations in the sphere of combating Nazism, neo-Nazism, aggressive nationalism, discrimination, xenophobia, racism and other forms of intolerance. The second chapter of the report contains fundamental provisions of international legal instruments and mechanisms. The third chapter exemplifies manifestations of neo-Nazism and related concepts and ideologies of hatred and points out the progress of a number of countries in combating neo-Nazism that requires further development and consolidation.

The data of the United Nations, the Council of Europe, the OSCE, international NGOs including human rights organizations such as Simon Wiesenthal Center and the International Human Rights Movement ‘World without Nazism’, reports of the national human rights structures, ombudsmen as well as statistics and researches of state authorities, studies of the leading world experts related to Nazism and neo-Nazism and documents from the Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation were used as sources in the preparation of this report.

The report is dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the Great Victory in commemoration of millions of people who have liberated the world from Nazism.

No one is forgotten and nothing is forgotten.”

Wrong, wrong, wrong!

All the victims of communist crimes are forgotten in this and Russia should know that in today’s world one cannot condemn one totalitarian regime of the past without condemning the other, for both were evil and oppressive. My feeling is that this document has been put together in the resistance to the movement in Eastern Europe that is exposing communist crimes for what they were – utter horror and inhumanity. The other Holocaust! Furthermore, this report would also serve as some justification for Russian interference in Ukraine, even if its reasoning and interpretation of events in Ukraine are quite twisted and evil.

The document pays special attention to Eastern European countries where there is presence of resistance to the spread of Russian influence on the continent – Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic countries – but other countries are also analysed, such as Austria, Belgium, Canada, Croatia, France, Germany, Great Britain, Denmark, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine … Curiously, given that it talks about supposed denial of rights to ethnic minorities, the report circumvents Serbia and all the ultranationalists there whose actions and inactions have seriously denied the Croatian and other minorities in Serbia many human and citizenship rights.
The Russians, among other things, state that “aggressive nationalism, ethnic and religious intolerance” in Croatia was directed primarily against the largest ethnic minority, Serbs, whose numbers have decreased by two-thirds since 1991. Suffice to say, the document has gathered all sorts of bits and pieces, uncorroborated or unproven acts of vandalism as to who actually perpetrated the acts of vandalism, stories of alleged hate crimes etc. Referring to unspecified data of unspecified human rights activists (therefore, cannot be verified), the document also states that during the last 19 years, about 30,000 Serbs in Croatia, Orthodox Christians, “converted to another faith, that is, accepted Catholicism.”

The president of Croatian Parliament’s Committee on Human rights and minority rights, Furio Radin, said for the Slobodna Dalmacija newspaper that he “never heard about 30,000 Serbs converting to Roman Catholicism” and concluded these were “unfounded figures, for if they were legitimate figures we would have addressed the matter already,” Radin concluded.

Although he was among the signatories of the recent Declaration Against Intolerance and Ethnocentrism in Croatia, Radin assures that Croatia cannot be accused of Neo-Nazism.

We have in Croatia some cases of sporadic flirting with Ustasha-ism, stadium nationalism, but the Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry assessment general assessment doe not stand, said Radin who is also a member of the Croatian Parliament representing the Italian minority in Croatia,

When it comes to the crux of the matter the Russian assessment of Neo-Nazism in Europe does not hold water at all. Not only does it use unverifiable and dubious data but also much of its data sources seem quite biased, and in the case of Croatia the report favours the views of former communists and Serbs in Croatia. One cannot with confidence say that this is an objective assessment that it pretends to be. But that’s Russia for you these days. Just pile it on irresponsibly and see what falls out…

Member of the Executive Board of the Croatian Helsinki Committee Ivo Banac said that “in Croatia, like elsewhere” there had been “incidents related to neo-fascism” – but asks “who are Russians to call others by names and what is their interest in doing that.”

Of course, as expected, the Russians think that there must be laws that prohibit historical revisionism! In other words: laws that prevent the whole truth of history from being recorded as part of that factual history!

With regards to Russian’s comments about the non-existence of laws that prohibit historical revisionism, Banac is adamant that such a law should not be passed in Croatia because it would limit freedom of speech. Regardless of the fact that someone might abuse facts, everyone has to have a right to freedom of speech, because it is the most effective fight for truth, a in no case should there only be some organisations, as ‘the Antifascist League’, favoured by the Russians, said Banac.
The Report says, “The rise of neo-Nazism and radical nationalism in Ukraine has recently, in particular after the unconstitutional coup d’état of February 2014, reached an unprecedented level. The whole range of manifestations and signs of neo Nazism has been registered in the country, including consistent, state-level rehabilitation and glorification of Nazi accomplices of the World War II, policy of falsification of its history, swift legitimization of radical nationalists and their entry to state power structures, purges and punitive military operations concerning the people labeled as conducting ‘anti-Ukrainian activities’ “… So, according to Russia, the West is supporting a Neo-Nazi state of Ukraine! Yeah, right!

While most will not take this report seriously it obviously stands as a part of a wider anti-European Union and anti-Ukraine propaganda campaign, mostly criticizing the Baltic States and Kiev. But it is insulting to Croatia, nevertheless. Croatia should now push harder towards lustration (getting rid from high public offices of all former communists in high positions under communist Yugoslavia) and towards getting real justice for the victims of communist crimes. And as for the EU and other countries Russia criticizes in this report for not doing much about stopping freedom of speech and expression one can suggest: bring on more sanctions against Russia than the current lot and give loud support to the condemnation of communist crimes! Ina Vukic, Prof. (Zgb); B.A., M.A.Ps. (Syd)