President Zoran Milanovic said on Tuesday he did not want Croatia to get involved in the war in Ukraine more than it should and more than it was good and safe for it.

He was speaking in Mravinci near Split at a ceremony marking 31 years of the BATT Special Police.

The president said that, in 1991, that Croatian unit was small and depended on a small number of the right and brave people. It is the same in every war, including the one in Ukraine, which depends on defenders and stout-hearted fighters to defend the capital of Kyiv, he added.

“I say these things with caution and restraint because I don’t want Croatia to get involved more than it should and more than it’s good and safe for it. But I had to say it,” Milanovic said, adding that 31 years ago “Croatia did not have weapons, an army, recognition. It didn’t have either the sympathies or the favours of a good part of the Western world. It was helped tacitly, if even so.”

At that time Croatia could not buy weapons, not even smuggle them at first, everything started with the police because there was no army, and from that police the Croatian Army was created, Milanovic said.