Serbia needs to align its policy on the Russian aggression against Ukraine with the EU policy and thus be on the right side of history, the Croatian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said after Serbia's interior minister Aleksandar Vulin said that Croatians "infallibly" chose the wrong side of history.

“Once again we call on Serbia to align its policy with the EU’s foreign and security policy, with regard to the aggression against Ukraine, and thus truly stand on the right side of history,” the ministry said in the press release.

The Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs also said that that Serbia was a European Union candidate and that the fundamental value of the EU was the rule of law, which included respect for international order, violated by the Russian aggression against Ukraine.

Earlier on Monday, Vulin commented on a statement by Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic in response to the cancellation of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s visit to Serbia that it was no time to sit in two chairs and the Serbia should “be very careful about who it sides with” if it wants to join the EU.

Serbian interior minister said that Serbia “wasn’t a territory but a state,” and that they decided on their own who their friends were. He also said that Croatians were “infallible” in choosing the wrong side of history.

The Croatian foreign ministry said that today’s statements from Serbia showed once again extraordinary disorientation both in the interpretation of the most important current global events and in the interpretation of historical events of the 20th century.

“Looking back thirty years and looking at the current political leadership, Serbia’s position on Russian aggression against Ukraine and why that is ‘the right side of history’ for Serbia is clear. What we can see in Ukraine today resembles what Serbia unsuccessfully attempted to carry out under the leadership of Slobodan Milosevic’s political regime in the first half of the 1990s with the aggression against the Republic of Croatia and the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. They were stopped, we recall, by Croatian military forces led by Croatia’s first president Franjo Tudjman,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in the press release.

The press release also stresses that Vulin was “politically part of the policy of Slobodan Milosevic’s criminal regime, which left behind numerous innocent victims and great destruction throughout Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo”.

“And that Greater Serbia policy was as such condemned in many rulings handed down by relevant international courts, but Minister Vulin still thinks that Serbia was actually on ‘the right side of history’ even then,” the press release adds.