Opposition MPs accused Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic on Wednesday of lying to and manipulating the public for a month. He was referring to Plenkovic's statement on Tuesday, when he said that some of the logistical activities of the NATO mission NSATU would also take place in Ukraine.

“We have been saying all along that the prime minister should not be trusted and we were right, he lied. The officers are going to Ukraine,” Most party leader Bozo Petrov said in a comment on the latest information released by the prime minister after he was, as the government claims, given permission to declassify a NATO document related to the activities that are part of the NATO Security Assistance and Training for Ukraine (NSATU) mission.

Plenkovic said that liaison officers taking part in the mission would also be deployed in Ukraine, but reiterated that up to five Croatian officers taking part in the mission would not leave Wiesbaden. Opposition MPs said that this was exactly what President Zoran Milanovic had said, while the ruling HDZ party had misled the public.

Most party: Plenkovic lied for a month

Most party’s MPs do not believe that Croatian officers would not go to Ukraine.

“This is what the man who said that no officers will go to Ukraine says. He was lying. Gradually, our officers will also end up in Ukraine, and therefore the majority of the party will not vote in favour,” Petrov said.

Many countries are helping Ukraine and they should, but only Plenkovic is strutting around saying that he has given Ukraine more than 200 million euros worth of weapons, said Most party MP Marin Miletic, who believes that Plenkovic is putting a target on Croatia.

The MPs of the Most party consider it irrelevant in this whole affair whether the SDP obtained secret information about the head of state, which the HDZ accuses it of doing.

“The procedure is clear, it should be established whether it was violated, but I personally would not investigate now whether someone had (secret) information or not. What matters is that it has been established that the prime minister tried to deceive the public. He lied for a month and now you are dealing with the question of whether the classification procedure was breached. Nobody is questioning whether it is normal for the prime minister to lie. I think this has become the norm in the last eight years,” Petrov said.

SDP party: We did not have classified information

SDP MP Arsen Bauk rejected the accusations that his party had access to secret documents, describing them as “part of election campaign folklore”

The HDZ’s actions should be seen in the context of the presidential election campaign and the attempt to score political points, Bauk said.

“We did not have access to this data, we had access to what all other citizens had, namely the president’s statements. As for the declassified data, it proves that the head of state has been saying all along what this declassified data proves, while the Defence Ministry has been saying something else,” Bauk said.

Regarding the statement of SDP MP Tonino Picula that he has nothing against Croatia’s participation in the NSATU mission, Bauk said that every party member has the right to their own opinion and Picula’s statement proves that the SDP is a democratic party.

The SDP will support the other 12 missions and activities on Friday because they are being carried out in parts of the world where hostilities have been frozen, have ended or have not started, Bauk said. As for the NSATU mission, the SDP has yet to hold a parliamentary group meeting at which it will decide which mechanism provided for in the parliament’s rules of procedure it will use to express its opposition, he said.

MP Anka Mrak-Taritas (GLAS party) said that Plenkovic “could not care less about Ukraine.”

“When he forwarded the decision (of the government) to the Parliament, he was aware that it was unlikely to be supported by a two-thirds majority and he did it on purpose. They could have demanded that the document (on the NSATU mission) be released immediately when they sent the decision to parliament. But he (Plenkovic) is using Ukraine for the presidential campaign of his poor (presidential) candidate. This is just a show that Plenkovic is staging for another reason, not to solve Ukraine’s problems,” she said.

“This shows what kind of party the HDZ is”

Sandra Bencic (Mozemo party) also believes that Plenkovic does not care about Ukraine and is using the current situation for the presidential election.

“The Minister of Defence has repeated for days that the activities (of the NATO mission) would take place exclusively on the territory of NATO countries. Yesterday he said that in parliament, and then his boss says something completely different. This shows what kind of party the HDZ is and how its leader is, who treats his ministers like pawns, which is very unfair,” Bencic said.

She said she did not believe Anusic’s statement that Plenkovic had asked NATO for permission to declassify the document on the NATO mission on Monday, the day before the parliamentary debate on the matter, and that he received it exactly on Tuesday, during the parliamentary debate.

“When we requested this in the parliamentary committee meetings, our request was rejected. And we also want answers as to who classified the document, who declassified it and whether the entire document has been declassified or whether there are parts of it that remain classified. The day before yesterday this was irrelevant, and yesterday it became so important that declassified data had to be presented to the public by the prime minister himself,” said Bencic.

Bencic: Why is Plenkovic in such a hurry?

Regarding the accusations of the HDZ and independent MP and presidential candidate Marija Selak Raspudic that the SDP had access to secret NATO information, which they derived from the questions posed by SDP MPs to Defence Minister Ivan Anusic on Tuesday, Bencic said that these were realistic questions that everyone in the parliamentary corridors was asking.

“The question about the nature of the mission – whether the soldiers are really going only to NATO member countries or also to Ukraine – was first asked by the president and it is only normal that the party that supports him asks the same question. But this accusation was first raised by Marija Selak-Raspudic and I call on the presidential candidates and MPs not to use important security issues for short-term goals,” said Bencic.

The Mozemo party MP also wondered why Prime Minister Plenkovic was in such a hurry when the deadline for the decision on Croatia’s participation in the NSATU mission does not expire until the end of the year.

“Why is Plenkovic in such a hurry if we still do not have the full picture? Because of the (presidential) election campaign. Unlike the EUMAM mission, which also required a two-thirds majority, nobody asked us anything this time. It seems to me that this is a show for the public so that Plenkovic can score a few political points instead of helping Ukraine,” said Bencic.