Zagreb, 12 January 2026 (Hina/MIA) — NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said Monday in Zagreb that Croatia was a strong and reliable ally of Ukraine and that Russia would not deter NATO allies from continuing to help Kyiv in the nearly four-year-long conflict.

Speaking at a news conference after his meeting with Croatian PM Andrej Plenković at the Government House, Rutte stressed that "Croatia is a strong and reliable partner of Ukraine" and added that since the start of Russia's war of aggression in February 2022, Croatia had allocated more than €300 million in support for Kyiv.

Russia has confirmed that it used the Oreshnik intermediate-range missile last week in an attack on Ukraine, a weapon which, according to Western military analysts, is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, and it continues to carry out attacks on civilian infrastructure.

"Russia wants to deter us from supporting Ukraine, but we will not be deterred. As Ukraine faces enormous pressure this cold winter, the support of Croatia and the support of all NATO allies are more important than ever," Rutte said at the news conference at Banski Dvori.

Prime Minister Andrej Plenković said the United States had a strong desire to create the preconditions for peace, but that Russia, "the aggressor on Ukrainian territory for almost four full years", must also agree to peace.

"At this moment, we have a problem in that Russia wants an agreement first and only then a ceasefire," Plenković said.

"The entire concept of the coalition of the willing and everything we discussed a few days ago in Paris is a ceasefire as the first step, followed by steps toward a peace agreement which, in our firm belief and based on Croatia's specific experience, should never require Ukraine to renounce de jure its occupied territories," the prime minister said.

He reiterated that it was "not an option" for the government to send Croatian soldiers to Ukraine itself, but that Croatia will continue to look for other ways to assist Ukraine.

Croatia an important NATO member

Since joining NATO in 2009, Croatia has been an important member of the Alliance. It makes a significant contribution to our collective security, not only on the eastern flank and in the Western Balkans, but across the entire Alliance, said Rutte on a working visit to Croatia.

The NATO Secretary General said that ahead of the Christmas holidays he had met Croatian servicemen and servicewomen taking part in NATO's Enhanced Forward Presence in Poland.

It was inspiring to see so many soldiers spending Christmas away from their families while keeping all of us safe, Rutte said.

The NATO secretary general expressed satisfaction that, as of the first day of this year, Croatia has assumed responsibility for the control and protection of its own airspace using Rafale multirole fighter aircraft as part of NATO's Integrated Air and Missile Defense System.

Responding to journalists' questions about NATO airspace security, Rutte said that NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe Alexus Grynkewich had launched an operation called Eastern Sentry to enhance NATO's presence along its Eastern flank following incursions by Russian drones into the territories of Poland and Estonia last year.

No one knows where the drone over Zagreb came from

In March 2022, just a few weeks after the start of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, an unmanned aerial vehicle crashed in Zagreb.

Responding to journalists' questions Monday, Prime Minister Plenković said the drone "came from Ukrainian territory and flew over Hungary — we have said this I don't know how many times."

"At that moment, the relevant services on the Hungarian side did not alert us because they themselves did not see it properly at the time, as they were not expecting it either," Plenković said.

Asked where exactly in Ukraine the drone had come from and who had launched it, the prime minister said that "neither we nor NATO know that."

Plenković added that Croatia now has multirole Rafale fighter aircraft, which have all the capabilities that the MiGs at the time did not have, including the ability to respond in practically a maximum of 15 minutes from any alert.