Croatian Volunteer Fighters Head for Ukrainian Frontline

Croatian citizens protest against the Russian attack on Ukraine in front of the Russian Embassy in Zagreb. Photo: EPA-EFE/ANTONIO BAT

Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic told a press conference on Ukraine on Sunday, that he had no information about volunteer fighters heading for the country and was just getting his information from the media. “Every departure to Ukraine is a personal act and a personal responsibility,” the PM.

The newspaper Dnevnik.hr on Saturday reported that Croatian volunteers had already left for Ukraine to fight the Russian invasion. “A larger group of volunteers should join the Ukrainian army in the next couple of days,” one told Dnevnik.hr on Sunday.

Vecernji list also wrote that help for Ukraine was being collected in the premises of the Bad Blue Boys, Dinamo football club’s supporters, in Zagreb. That action was reportedly coordinated by Denis Seler, who spent six years with Ukraine’s far-right Azov battalion.

“We are on the Ukrainian border with Hungary. We are going to the battlefield to join the Ukrainian people and our Croatians. We know that chances are slim that this war will end in Ukraine,” the same volunteer added.

“Ukraine helped us in 1991, and again after the earthquakes in Zagreb and Banovina. That’s why we are going to help Ukrainians in the war,” another volunteer, who contacted them from Letenye border crossing, told Vecernji list.

RTL media wrote that after a group of volunteers left for the battlefield, it contacted one of them via video.

“Other Croatian soldiers are already in Ukraine, that’s an important point. The first transport of soldiers left for Ukraine yesterday and today two more teams are arriving – one from Split and Zadar and the second from Osijek,” a young man wearing a balaclava said on the video.

“Ukraine was among the first countries to acknowledge Croatia’s sovereignty while we were fighting for freedom [in 1991],” he explained.

A BIRN investigation in 2019 reported that in 2014 and 2015, Seler was among 20 or 30 Croatians who fought as part of the far-right Azov volunteer battalion against Russian-backed rebels in eastern Ukraine.

Balkan nations are sharply divided over the Russia-Ukraine dispute.

Serbs have strong sympathies with fellow Orthodox Chrstian Russians, while many Croats back Ukraine’s resistance to domination by Moscow, Serbia’s close ally.

Nationalists from both Croatia and Ukraine see much in common in their countries’ recent histories.

Far-right groups in Ukraine grew in prominence with their role in the overthrow of President Viktor Yanukovych, manning armed barricades in Kyiv’s Independence Square.

Volunteers are coming from other countries too. Britain’s Foreign Secretary, Liz Truss, has told reporters she would support British nationals joining the fight in Ukraine, “Absolutely, if that’s what they want to do,” she said. “That is something people can make their own decisions about. The people of Ukraine are fighting for freedom and democracy, not just for Ukraine but for the whole of Europe.”

A website has been set up for would-be fighters by Macer Gifford who spent several years fighting ISIS in Syria.