Each EU country will be left to its own devices to cope with the fuel price hikes, and the EU's "stupid policy on the war in Ukraine is not in Croatia's interest," President Zoran Milanovic said in Koprivnica on Thursday.

Milanovic said that the European Union is incapable of setting up a common relief policy in dealing with the energy crisis caused by the war in Ukraine, and therefore “everybody will be left to their own devices.”

“It’s all about money. It will have to be taken from someone to compensate others,” said Milanovic in his comment on the fuel price rises because of the war in Ukraine and the European sanctions on Russia, which has been the major gas supplier for Europe.

“We can see now Russia torturing Ukraine. It is immoral,” he said, adding that a part of the responsibility “lies with all of us”, referring to the West.

Drawing a parallel to the situation in Croatia in the first half of the 1990s and present-day Ukraine, Milanovic said that Croatia’s first President Franjo Tudjman had been ready to sign a very unfavorable “Z4” plan on the reintegration of the occupied Croatian areas only to avoid further warfare.

However, there were some bad people who made sure that did not happen, said Milanovic referring to the then Serbian leaders, including the current Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, who refused that plan.

“On the other hand, Ukraine was not ready to sign a much less unfavorable arrangement,” Milanovic said, and added that the responsibility also lies with the countries that persuaded Kyiv that it should not sign anything with Russia, which he described as “an empire that will not collapse”.

Mol

Asked if it was appropriate that the Croatian members of the Ina energy company’s supervisory board could not know the prices at which its majority shareholder Mol bought and sold oil, Milanovic said it was a question of compromise between Croatian and Hungarian managers, which meant Hungarians are free to do with Ina’s oil as they please, and Croatians control the gas business. “The compromise is, don’t touch the oil, we’ll give you gas.”

He said he had not discussed that with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, and that he saw no point in it. Milanovic said he was in contact with Orban as he was “with everyone who could be useful to Croatia,” and that he wished he could say the same about Serbia’s Vucic.

He said that “unlike Vucic, Orban had never held incendiary speeches against Croatia 30 km from Zagreb or called the Croatian regime genocidal.”