Croatian President Zoran Milanovic reiterated his position on Thursday that the war in Ukraine is actually the consequence of settling of accounts between Moscow and Washington at the expense of Kyiv and the war would be resolved between Moscow and Washington.

“In my mind, all that is happening there is disastrous and detrimental  both for Ukraine and for global peace,” Milanovic said in the coastal city of Zadar today, criticising the ongoing meeting between western allies and Ukraine in Ramstein, Germany, on more military support to Kyiv.

“They are talking about how to further participate in the war by not participating and to ensure that none of ours is killed. Everything else is being done by NATO, while Russia is settling accounts with the Americans via Ukraine,” said Milanovic.

“This will not be settled either in Berlin or in Paris, let alone in Brussels, where totally irrelevant and non-elected people sit. This will be settled between Moscow and Washington. That’s how it started in the first place,” Milanovic said.

On Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said he viewed as ‘honest’ Milanovic’s recent statement that NATO is engaged in a proxy war against Russia. “Just recently Croatian President Milanovic said that it is NATO’s war against Russia. Frankly and honestly,” Lavrov said while speaking at his annual press conference about the results of Russian diplomacy in 2022.

During his visit to Zadar today, Milanovic was asked by the press to comment on Lavrov’s statement.

Milanovic replied that he was not interested in and did not know what Lavrov intended to achieve with that statement.

“I met him only once and we talked for half an hour. I was detached in that conversation, as always in relations with the Russians, because one should be cautious,” Milanovic said. He criticised Foreign Minister Gordan Grlic-Radman for meeting with Lavrov in Moscow on 17 January 2022, just before the outbreak of the war in Ukraine.

Milanovic said that on that occasion Grlic-Radman had extended an invitation for Russian President Vladimir Putin to visit Croatia, underscoring that in his capacity as the President of Croatia he had not given approval for that invitation.