Zagreb - A total of 28 out of 32 NATO member states have agreed to participate in NSATU so far, NATO Deputy Secretary General Boris Ruge said in the Sabor on Wednesday, stressing 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 session of the parliament's Committee for Foreign Policy and the Parliamentary Delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, NATO Deputy Secretary General Ruge was answering questions about the 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 Organization, but Ruge, an experienced diplomat, underscored that he only arrived here to talk about NSATU.
This activity will be established outside of Ukraine and there will be no NATO forces in Ukraine, Ruge stressed.
Croatian officers will not go to Ukraine
Although NSATU will not operate on Ukrainian territory, several liaison officers will go to Ukraine on a temporary basis to coordinate the dispatch of aid from Wiesbaden, the mission's headquarters, Ruge said.
They do not have to be Croatian officers. You as a country have the option to omit this function of sending officers and clearly state that your officers may not be sent to Ukraine, said the NATO Deputy Secretary General, who stressed several times that this was Croatia's autonomous decision.
Last week, Prime Minister Andrej Plenković underscored that the government's decision on participation in NSATU included 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".
MPs of the HDZ party and the ruling coalition mostly reiterated their position with their questions - Croatian soldiers, if they participate in the NSATU mission, will not be sent to Ukrainian territory, and Croatia will not become part of the conflict.
Four members of alliance might not be involved in NSATU
Bridge party MP Miro Bulj asked Ruge to specify those four member-states that have not confirmed their participation in NSATU and whether he considers them "pro-Russian", although the deputy general secretary never said anything like that.
This Opposition MP insisted that "this is a war mission and that Croatia is becoming a legitimate target in this conflict."
Ruge dismissed that claim and pointed out that he did not want to label 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 did not want to say which four did not because that was not publicly available information.
Bulj wanted to know whether Ruge visited other parliaments of member countries to speak about NSATU, to which the NATO Deputy Secretary General replied that he had been to the parliaments of the USA, the Netherlands and Portugal, not to others because he had not been invited.
The Bridge party MP also asked the NATO official about a stray drone that had fallen near a student hall of residence 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 rocket drone was armed with explosive.
It is being investigated how it passed through without Romanian and Hungarian flight controllers recognising it in their busy air space as a serious threat, the Croatian prime minister said after the incident.
Bridge MP says Ruge's attendance instrumentalised for daily political purposes
Ivana Kekin of the Bridge party told the committee that the participation of the NATO Deputy Secretary-General was actually made use for "continuing to irresponsibly manage the process about Croatia's role in the said mission."
Instead of sensible dialogue between top office holders, we could see oneupmanship, and later the topic was forwarded to the parliament, and instead of being given accurate and reasoned information, we were called various names, said Kekin.
She informed Ruge that in Croatia there is a very high consensus about assistance to Ukraine and that she and other Croatians are proud of assistance provided to that war-stricken country.
Her party's colleague, Sandra Benčić, also said that the arrival of Ruge was instrumentalised for daily political purposes and accused of the ruling coalition of not actually being committed to the efforts to settle this issue.
Instead, the ruling coalition has called Opposition MPs "pro-Russian ducklings" .
Benčić added that the Opposition has never been told that apart from the military staff, also civilians can participate in NSATU.
Ruge responded to her that this is more as an exception that as a rule, and that 28 allies in NATO have decided to deploy army personnel.
HDZ MO Ivan Budalić said that the claims made by President Milanović and his aides were in contravention of what Ruge has told them today.
In response to Budalić's question whether participating in NSATU would turn Croatia into a target for Russia's attacks, Ruge said that it was not correct.