page_title: Croatia–Russia relations
section_title: 1990s
hierarchical_section_title: Croatia–Russia relations / History / 1990s
caption_attribution_description: English: THE KREMLIN, MOSCOW. President Putin with Croatian President Stepan Mesic.Русский: МОСКВА, КРЕМЛЬ. С Президентом Хорватии Степаном Месичем.
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: According to the allegations in the Croatian press, in violation of the UN arms embargo imposed on the former Yugoslavia, during the Croatian War of Independence, significant amounts of arms were delivered from Russia to Croatia. Russian president Boris Yeltsin allegedly approved shipments of weapons by 150 airplanes, which took off from a military base 200 kilometers east of Moscow in the period from 1992 to 1997. There were 150 to 160 flights that transported hundreds of tons of weaponry per year. In 2016, Croatian daily Večernji List published an article in which Marin Tomulić, representative of the Croatian Government's Office for the Protection of the Constitutional Order in negotiations on weaponry, stated that he received a catalog of all types of ″Russian″ weapons from the French Government. In 2017, Večernji List published an article in which businessmen Zvonko Zubak, owner of a company that was Croatia's main weapons supplier during the war, claimed that Russian Ambassador to Croatia Anvar Azimov had summoned him to the Russian Embassy asking for an "inventory of all arms that arrived to Croatia via Russia between 1992 and 1997"; the article cited Azimov as allegedly stating that Croatia "should be reminded of who was arming and rescuing it during the embargo". The inventory, that Večernji List has seen, cites 16.000 tonnes of various Russian weapons, including two MiG 21 jets, few squadrons of transport and assault helicopters, including  Mil Mi-24, and anti-aircraft systems, including the S-300 missile system. In April 2017, former Croatian president Ivo Josipović said that "during the war, Russia helped Croatia, not only with weaponry, but also politically". In April 2017, Russian Foreign Ministry officials rejected such allegations as false.
  On 4 November 1996, Russian President Yeltsin awarded Croatian President Franjo Tuđman with Medal of Zhukov.
  During the 1990s, major fortunes were made in Russia by some Croatian nationals such as Danko Končar, who attributed his business success in Russia, among other things, to his "normal human contact" with the FSB, Russia's successor agency to the USSR's KGB.
caption: Croatian President Stjepan Mesić and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow in 2002
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