Croatian Foreign Ministry released a stern press release on Tuesday in response to earlier statements made by Serbian officials about Croatia and its 1995 military offensive Operation Storm.

Croatian Foreign Ministry issued a statement on Tuesday in response to earlier statements made by Serbian officials about Croatia.

“Once again, we are witnessing the repeating of malicious and completely unfounded statements by Serbian officials about Croatia, which we reject in their entirety,” the Ministry said.

On Saturday, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic compared Operation Storm and Croatia with the World War II Nazi regime. Croatia celebrates the offensive's anniversary every year in August, seeing it as a glorious military victory which ended its independence war, while Serbia views it as an act of ethnic cleansing due to a mass exodus of ethnic Serbs who fled from Croatia into Bosnia and Serbia.

“When it comes to comparisons with the Nazi regime, this is a clear fallacy, since it was the regime of the President of Serbia, Slobodan Milosevic – with the help of the Yugoslav People's Army, and parts of Croatian and Bosnian Serbs – who was responsible for the return of ethnic cleansing to Europe after World War II, by trying to create the ethnically cleansed so-called Greater Serbia in what was a third of Croatia's territory, and the entire Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Kosovo. And in doing so – as has been clearly found in relevant international forums and courts – used any means available in achieving their expansionist goals, including ethnic cleansing and genocide.

Furthermore, the idea that ‘Slovenia and Croatia had illegally seceded’, uttered in the year 2018, only goes to show how Serbia still has a long way to go in facing its recent history, its role in the collapse of the former country, and the aggression against its neighbours. However, instead of taking that route, Serbian officials seem to be increasingly losing their sense of the time and space they are in, and continue their defamatory campaign against Croatia

In Operation Storm, the Croatian military and police had liberated most of the occupied territory of Croatia, which paved the way for the end of the aggression against Croatia, for the peaceful re-integration of occupied areas along the Danube river, and for peace and freedom in Croatia.

Determinedly facing the past, as well as a constructive fact-based approach, are the only right way to build good neighbourly relations and true reconciliation, for which Croatia has been extending its hand and offering cooperation since 1996. However, the unwillingness of some to face the past only serves to set back true reconciliation,” the Ministry said in a press release.