page_title: Croatia–Russia relations
section_title: 2000s—2010s
hierarchical_section_title: Croatia–Russia relations / History / 2000s—2010s
caption_attribution_description: English: The Croatia national football team gather around for the cameras in the dressing rooms at Luzhniki Stadium with the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin and President of Croatia Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović, to commemorate their appearance at the 2018 FIFA World Cup Final. While they lost the match to France by two goals to four, the team celebrated their country's best result at a FIFA World Cup yet, placing second and topping their third-place finish at the 1998 FIFA World Cup. Русский: Сборная Хорватии по футболу собирается для камер в раздевалках на стадионе «Лужники» с Президентом Российской Федерации Владимиром Путиным и Президентом Хорватии Колиндой Грабар-Китаровичем, чтобы отметить их появление на Финале Кубка мира по футболу 2018 года. В то время как они проиграли матч Франции с двумя голами до четырех, команда отметила лучший результат своей страны на чемпионате мира по футболу, заняв второе место и заняв третье место на чемпионате мира по футболу 1998 года.
context_page_description: Croatia–Russia relations refer to bilateral foreign relations between Croatia and Russia. The countries established diplomatic relations on 25 May 1992. Croatia has an embassy in Moscow and honorary consulates in Kaliningrad, Novosibirsk, and Sochi. Russia has an embassy in Zagreb and honorary consulates in Pula and Split. While geographically not close, Croatia and Russia are both Slavic countries and thus share cultural heritage. Both countries are full members of the Council of Europe and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. Croatia is a popular tourist destination with Russian travelers in spite of a drastic drop in the numbers after 2014 following the Ukrainian crisis that caused political tension between Russia and the EU, to which Croatia had acceded in 2013. At the end of 2016, Russian experts were cited as judging Russian–Croatian relations to be "cold".
context_section_description: In the 2000s and early 2010s, consecutive presidents of Croatia, Stjepan Mesić and Ivo Josipović, made multiple official and working visits to Russia. 
  According to former Croatian ambassador to Russia Božo Kovačević, Russia's leadership stopped taking the Croatian government seriously by the end of the 2000s, as they had realised that successive governments of Croatia had been consciously deceiving their Russian counterparts when pledging cooperation on the Druzhba Adria pipeline project, whose eventual rejection by the Croatian side Kovačević puts down primarily to pressure on the part of the U.S. Instead, in order to create a powerful instrument of influence and secure Russian capture of Croatia′s political establishment, Russia embarked on its tried-and-tested strategy of weakening the market position of a national oil and gas company, namely INA d.d., whose dominant role in the Croatian gas market had by 2017 been assumed by the Prvo Plinarsko Društvo (PPD) gas trading company, a proxy for importing Gazprom’s gas. Among other things, through its loans PPD financed the 2014–15 presidential election campaign of Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović, who went on to win the election. In the opinion of Denis Kuljiš, Russia had always sought to exercise control over Croatia′s president as it was understood that Croatia′s government "must take orders from Brussels".
  At the beginning of 2016, Russian ambassador to Croatia Anvar Azimov complained publicly that none of the ten Croatian ministers invited by him to attend various events in Russia had visited Russia. At the end of 2016, Russian experts were cited as assessing Russian–Croatian relations as "cold". 
  In September 2016, Jutarnji list reported that Croatia had expelled one Russian diplomat suspected of spying. An unnamed source, described as "a former Croatian diplomat who was well familiar with the situation in Russia", stated that he knew for a fact that "the Russians were very hurt" and that they responded by expelling one Croatian diplomat. An article published in the Foreign Affairs magazine in July 2017 referred to Andrej Plenković′s government as "currently the West’s strongest ally against Russian expansion in the Balkans."
  The visit to Russia by Croatia's president Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović in October 2017 was seen by Russian commentators as a sign of tentative warming of relations that had been ″semi-frozen″ on the official level since 2009. President Grabar-Kitarović stressed the prospects of economic cooperation between the countries.
  On 26 March 2018, Croatia expelled one Russian diplomat as a show of solidarity with the United Kingdom which accused Russia of poisoning Sergei and Yulia Skripal. In retaliation, Russia on 30 March banned the chief of staff of the Croatian foreign minister Marija Pejčinović Burić — Rina Eterović Goreta, who had from 2015 until 2017 been Croatia's chargé d'affaires in Moscow, — from entering its territory in an official capacity. Russia's choice of person was judged to be a surprise by experts. According to mass media reports, some Croat businesspeople and politicians, namely Milijan Brkić, during the 2018 Bosnian general election campaign in Bosnia and Herzegovina were closely coordinating their activities with Russia′s security and intelligence officials, specifically Nikolai Patrushev, Secretary of the Security Council of Russia and previously Director of the Russian Federal Security Service (in the opinion of the former Minister of the Interior of Croatia, Vlaho Orepić, published in the autumn of 2019, Milijan Brkić, while not holding any position in the government, was the de facto coordinator of Croatia′s secret services; Milijan Brkić was also widely viewed as the kingmaker in the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), one of the country′s two major political parties, as well as head of the informal "para-intelligence" grouping within the HDZ that had sought to undermine the Plenković administration, the country′s judicial institutions, and individual state officials and had infiltrated Croatia′s state institutions such as the Ministry o
caption: Croatia football players pose with presidents, Vladimir Putin and Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović, following the 2018 FIFA World Cup Final, which Croatia lost to France 4-2, the Luzhniki Stadium, Moscow.[48]
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