A total of 28 out of 32 NATO member states have so far confirmed their participation in NSATU, NATO Acting Deputy Secretary General Boris Ruge Boris Ruge said on Wednesday, emphasising that the mission does not make NATO a party to the war in Ukraine and that Croatia can refuse to send its officers to Ukraine.

At the joint meeting of the Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee and the Croatian Parliamentary Delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, NATO Acting Deputy Secretary General Ruge answered questions on NATO Security Assistance and Training for Ukraine (NSATU).

The MPs were also interested in a number of other topics related to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, but Ruge, a seasoned diplomat, stressed that he had only come here to talk about NSATU.

This activity will be based outside Ukraine and there will be no NATO troops in Ukraine, Ruge emphasised.

Croatian officers will not go to Ukraine

Although NSATU will not operate on Ukrainian territory, several liaison officers will temporarily travel to Ukraine to coordinate the dispatch of relief supplies from Wiesbaden, the mission’s headquarters, Ruge said.

They do not necessarily have to be Croatian officers. You as a country have the possibility to refrain from this function of sending officers and clearly state that your officers must not be sent to Ukraine, said the NATO Deputy Secretary General, who emphasised several times that this was Croatia’s autonomous decision.

Last week, Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic emphasised that the government’s decision on participation in the NSATU contained a national restriction “which ‘expressis verbis’ puts the parliament’s decision on paper – Croatian officers will participate in the NSATU activity, but only on allied territory”.

The MPs from the HDZ party and the ruling coalition largely confirmed their position with their questions – Croatian soldiers will not be sent to Ukrainian territory if they participate in the NSATU mission, and Croatia will not become part of the conflict.

Four members of the Alliance may not be involved in NSATU

Miro Bulj, MP from the Most party, asked Ruge to name the four member states that have not confirmed their participation in NSATU and whether he considers them “pro-Russian”, although the Deputy Secretary General has never said anything to that effect.

This opposition MP insisted that “this is a war mission and that Croatia is becoming a legitimate target in this conflict.”

Ruge rejected this claim and pointed out that he did not want to designate nations that did not want to participate.

He said that 28 NATO members had decided to participate in NSATU activities and had publicly announced this, but he would not say which four did not, as this was not publicly available information.

The Croatian government had all the information about the drone crash in Zagreb

Bulj wanted to know whether Ruge had visited other parliaments of member countries to talk about NSATU. The NATO Deputy Secretary General replied that he had been to the parliaments of the USA, the Netherlands and Portugal, but not to others because he had not been invited.

The MP from the Most party also asked the NATO official about a stray drone that crashed near a student dormitory in Zagreb a month after the start of the aggression against Ukraine. Independent MP Dario Zurovec asked the same question.

Ruge replied that the Croatian government had all the information about the drone crash and that he did not know the details.

The Soviet-era unmanned aerial vehicle crashed in Zagreb on 10 March 2022. This 14-metre-long missile drone was armed with explosives.

It is being investigated how it was able to pass without Romanian and Hungarian air traffic controllers recognising it as a serious threat in their busy airspace, the Croatian prime minister said after the incident.

Most party MPs say Ruge’s presence was instrumentalised for daily political purposes

Ivana Kekin from the Mozemo party told the Committee that the participation of the NATO Deputy Secretary General was in fact used to “continue to irresponsibly steer the process on Croatia’s role in the said mission.”

Instead of a reasonable dialogue between the top officials, we could observe egoism. Later, the issue was referred to the parliament and instead of receiving accurate and reasoned information, we were called different names, Kekin said.

She told Ruge that there is a very large consensus in Croatia on aid to Ukraine and that she and other Croatians are proud of the aid given to the war-torn country.

Her party colleague Sandra Bencic also said that Ruge’s arrival was being instrumentalised for daily political purposes and accused the governing coalition of not really working to solve the problem.

Ruge says that participation in the NSATU would not make Croatia a target for Russian attacks

Instead, the governing coalition has labelled opposition MPs as “pro-Russian ducklings”.

Bencic added that the opposition had never been told that civilians could take part in NSATU alongside military personnel.

Ruge replied that this was the exception rather than the rule and that 28 NATO allies had decided to deploy military personnel.

HDZ MP Ivan Budalic said that the claims made by President Milanovic and his aides contradicted what Ruge had told them on Wednesday.

When asked by Budalic whether participation in NSATU would make Croatia a target for Russian attacks, Ruge said that this was not the case.