Plenkovic: Croatia is closely following Serbia’s arming, which looks like a ‘shopping mania’

Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said on Friday in Zagreb that Croatia is closely following Serbia’s arming, at a joint press conference with Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Soder, as the newspaper Danas reports, citing the Croatian portals Nina and Index.hr.

Commenting on the earlier statement by Croatian Defence Minister Ivan Anusic about Serbia’s aggressive and hostile rhetoric and its arming, Plenkovic said Serbia is going through an “incredible process of arming, almost like a ‘shopping mania’ around the world”, and that all of Serbia’s neighbouring countries should ask why it is arming itself so much.

Croatia, as a member of the EU and NATO, looks after its own security and has tripled its defence budget over the past 10 years, he said, but the capacities it is building “are a threat to no one” — they serve only as a deterrent to prevent a repeat of the aggression of the 1990s.

Plenkovic added that Croatia discusses the issue of Serbia’s arming with all of its partners, according to Danas’s reporting.