Brnabic: Pressure on Serbia bigger than ever, some in opposition working for Croatian interests

BELGRADE - Serbian Parliament Speaker Ana Brnabic said on Thursday the pressure on Serbia had culminated and was bigger than ever and that the election campaign in Croatia had shown that Zagreb had a strategic interest in Aleksandar Vucic not being at the helm of Serbia.

Speaking to Pink TV, Brnabic noted that some opposition politicians in Serbia were also working for Croatian interests.

She said Croatia was providing logistical, intelligence and financial support to accomplish that strategic interest, and added that this was not about a statement by just one presidential candidate in Croatia but an absolute consensus of all presidential candidates and that Zagreb had not denied that.

It is completely clear that Croatian intelligence agencies are behind many things that have been going on in Serbia - not just now but over the past decade, primarily since 2017, when Vucic became president of Serbia, Brnabic said.

"They put certain opposition leaders and certain people in the NGO sector under their influence easily. Some of them are quite consciously working to achieve Croatia's strategic interest of toppling Aleksandar Vucic, while others are doing so unconsciously," Brnabic said.

She said statements by Croatian presidential candidates about Vucic were a definition of unpermitted interference in the internal affairs of another country.

Vucic is a thorn in their side because he has always been trying to build trust in the region based on fair relationships and because he does not remain silent in the face of crimes against the Serbs, as well as because he is not letting Croatia's "Operation Storm" - the largest-scale ethnic cleansing in Europe since WWII - be forgotten, Brnabic said.

In terms of economic parameters, Serbia is overtaking Croatia and has a higher GDP for the first time in history, Brnabic said.

She said Serbia had doubled the length of new roads built since the beginning of Vucic's presidency and would get ahead of Croatia in that sector, too, next year, and noted that that had been unthinkable until about ten years ago.