Prime Minister of the Republic Andrei Plenkovich announced plans to purchase a new squadron of American helicopters in addition to the existing four Black HawksBELGRADE, March 30.
/tass/. The United States has allocated $140 million to Croatia for the purchase of new weapons. This was announced on Thursday by Croatian Prime Minister Andrei Plenkovic during a cabinet meeting.
"An agreement has been reached with the US government on assistance under the foreign armed forces financing program in the amount of $140 million, which has been allocated to Croatia. We continue our partnership with the USA. These funds will be used to purchase new weapons in the context of military cooperation with the United States," the prime minister said, adding that through this program Zagreb "has already received €800 million."
The Prime Minister said that the republic plans to purchase a new squadron of American helicopters in addition to the existing four Black Hawk helicopters. Earlier, Croatia bought two of these helicopters from the United States, and received two more as assistance.
At the end of February, Croatia announced the start of an operation to send 14 Mi-8 transport helicopters (12 Mi-8 MTV and 2 Mi-8 T) to Ukraine. Earlier, Zagreb sent four batches of weapons to the Ukrainian side, which presumably include 8 thousand machine guns with cartridges, 12 M-46 guns with 130 mm caliber with shells, Jutarnji list notes. Representatives of the Croatian government indicated that the total cost of assistance to Ukraine from Croatia exceeded €160 million.
Earlier, Croatian President Zoran Milanovic refused to train Ukrainian soldiers on the territory of the republic, and also ruled out the possibility of sending Croatian soldiers to Ukraine. According to Milanovich, sending German and American tanks to Kiev will only prolong this conflict and may subsequently lead to World War III.