Croatia and Russia established diplomatic relations on 25 May 1992. Croatia has an embassy in Moscow and honorary consulates in Kaliningrad, Novosibirsk, and Sochi.Diplomatske misije i konzularni uredi RH u svijetu Russia has an embassy in Zagreb and honorary consulates in Pula and Split. The two nations are geographically distant within Europe. They are both Slavic countries and thus share distant language heritage. Both are members of the OSCE.
Since the 2010s, Russian–Croatian relations have been cold due to divergent political ideologies. Croatia is strongly aligned with the Western world, alongside the United States, NATO, and the European Union.Лавров отмахнулся от Балкан: Между Россией и Хорватией возник спор о российской угрозе на Балканах Gazeta.ru, 13 December 2016. Russian influence in Serbia and within Montenegro routinely complicate trilateral relations with Croatia. Croatia sanctioned Russia over the Russo-Ukrainian war, limiting Russian access to both its tourism and energy sectors.
Background
Cultural and personal ties between Russia and persons from the territory of modern Croatia date far back prior to Croatian independence in 1991, such as a trip to Moscow by Croatian Catholic missionary Juraj Križanić in 1659 who later was exiled to Tobolsk in Siberia where he spent 16 years writing manuscripts that promoted Pan-Slavism.
Against the backdrop of the Illyrian movement, a pan-South-Slavist movement, regarded in Croatian historiography as part of the Croatian national revival (Hrvatski narodni preporod), some prominent Croats in the 19th century (the lands of modern Croatia then being largely part of the Austrian Empire, later Austria-Hungary) sought to develop a stronger relationship with Russia because "they saw in Imperial Russia a world power and brotherly Slavic nation from which they had hoped to gain help during the Croatian National Revival."Otokar Keršovani, History of Croatia
Croatian nationalist Eugen Kvaternik, who was one of the two founders of the Croatian nationalist Party of Rights, traveled, among other countries, to Russia at the end of 1857 and stayed there for most of 1858 hoping to enlist help for the cause of the Croatian independence from the Austrian empire (Russo-Austrian relations were poor in the wake of the Crimean War), but did not accomplish much.Eugen Kvaternik: Gorke uspomene "Hervatska", 1870.Dr N.Z. Bjelovučić. Dr. Eugen Kvaternik He later came to view Russia as a threat to the cause of the Catholics in the Croatian lands as he believed that Russia sought to enhance its own influence in the Balkans by promoting the Orthodox faith and therefore supported the Orthodox Serbs.Dragutin Pavličević. Eugen Kvaternik o istočnom pitanju (1859–1868). Zagreb, 1995, pp. 87–88, 93.Dragutin Pavličević. Eugen Kvaternik u hrvatskoj politici i publicistici 1859.-1871. godine. Zagreb, 1997. One of the notable figures of the Illyrian movement, Ivan Kukuljević Sakcinski, maintained contacts with a number of Russian academics, slavists, university professors, his contact person with them being the Russian priest at the Russian Embassy in Vienna, Mihail Fjodorović Rajevski. He wrote to Russian scientist Alexander Stepanovich Popov in 1877: "You in Moscow know very well for how long South Slavs had been waiting for salvation. You also know that the eyes of the Slavs are fixed on you and that our hearts are full with you".
While Russia's relations with Serbia, a country popularly viewed as a traditional ally of Russia,Vuk Vuksanovic. Serbs Are Not “Little Russians”. The American Interest, 26 July 2018. deteriorated following the Russo-Turkish War and the 1878 Congress of Berlin (the public in Serbia viewed the terms thereof as overly favourable for Bulgaria, Russia's client state, at the expense of Serbia), her influence in the Croatian lands increased: the Party of Rights under Ante Starčević adopted a Russophile orientation, a tactic in their bid to achieve Croatian independence of the Habsburgs. Such aspirations notwithstanding, the visit to Saint Petersburg by Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph and his conference with Nicholas II of Russia in 1897 heralded a secret agreement between the two empires to honour and seek to maintain the status quo in the Balkans.
In 1914–1917, several formations of the Royal Croatian Home Guard within the Austro-Hungarian Army, as well as the Common Army′s (K.u.K.) regiments recruited from the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia (such as the 79th Infantry Regiment from Otočac), participated in the WWI campaigns fighting against the Imperial Russian Army in Galicia and Bukovina; they incurred heavy losses in August—September 1914 and especially during the first phase of the Russian offensive in June 1916.Nikola Tominac. «Brusilovljeva ofenziva i velika stradanja ličke 79. Pješačke pukovnije iz Otočca». // VP: Magazin za vojnu povijest, Vecernji list D.o.o, № 82, January 2018, pp. 15, 19.Jevgenij Paščenko. «Hrvatski grobovi 1914-1918. Karpati, Galicija, Bukovina». Zagreb, 2016, pp. 44—46.Nikola Tominac. «LIČANI U "VELIKOM RATU": Zimska bitka za Karpate, siječanj – travanj 1915».
During the period between the world wars, in the 1920s–1930s, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, which had incorporated the Croatian lands, hosted a sizable part of the White exiles who fled Soviet Russia during the Russian Civil War. Along with Serbia, Croatia accepted thousands of mainly indigent″Препродаја блага у београдској залагаоници: Из тајних архива УДБЕ: РУСКА ЕМИГРАЦИЈА У ЈУГОСЛАВИЈИ 1918–1941.″ // Politika, 6 December 2017, p. 13. Russian refugees led by General Pyotr Wrangel and Metropolitan Anthony Khrapovitsky. Until his death in 1936, Metropolitan Anthony was regarded as a leader of all the Russian refugees in Yugoslavia,″Политика митрополита Антонија: Из тајних архива УДБЕ: РУСКА ЕМИГРАЦИЈА У ЈУГОСЛАВИЈИ 1918–1941.″ // Politika, 16 January 2018, p. 21. a country whose staunchly anti-Soviet, anti-Communist monarchist regime refused to establish diplomatic relations with the USSR until June 1940. Zagreb and some other Croatian cities had numerous military, religious, educational and professional Russian establishments, all of which were closed down in May 1945, after the imposition of the Communist regime in Croatia. Most of those few Russians who had failed to leave for the West, were subjected to reprisals and prosecution, or forced to leave for the USSR.Škiljan, Filip (2014). Rusi u Hrvatskoj [Russians in Croatia] (in Croatian). Zagreb: Savez Rusa u Republici Hrvatskoj. . p. 25.Puškadija-Ribkin, Tatjana (2006). Emigranti iz Rusije u znanstvenom i kulturnom životu Zagreba (in Croatian). Zagreb: Prosvjeta. . p. 96.
During the German-Soviet War (June 1941–May 1945), the 369th Croatian Reinforced Infantry Regiment (a unit of Germany′s 100th Jäger Division of the German Army, under Croatian officers Viktor Pavičić and later Marko Mesić) was the only non-German military unit that was assigned to fight inside the city itself (unlike the Italian and Romanian troops) and went on to distinguish itself, in the Battle of Stalingrad, but nonetheless surrendered along with the German 6th Army in early February 1943.How Croatian military units fought against the USSR in WWII, 26 February 2021. The Luftwaffe's Croatian Air Force Legion was in active combat against the Soviets from October 1941 until July 1944. Kriegsmarine's Croatian Naval Legion was active along the Soviet coast of the Black Sea and was from May 1942 based in Mariupol on the northern coast of the Sea of AzovHrvatska pomorska legija na Crnom moru 1941.-1944., 27 March 2014. (the city had been captured virtually without a fight by the LSSAH on 8 October 1941).
At the end of the war in Europe, units of the Red Army′s 3rd Ukrainian Front fought in some Croat-populated territories, then mostly outside the borders of the pro-Germany Independent State of Croatia (the NDH). On the day Germany attacked the Soviet Union, 22 June 1941, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY) received orders from the Moscow-based Comintern to come to the Soviet Union's aid and on the same day, Croatian communists set up the 1st Sisak Partisan Detachment, the first armed anti-fascist guerrilla unit formed in occupied Yugoslavia during World War II. From July 1941, Tito's Yugoslav Partisans, supported by the USSR, fought against Germany, the NDH, and allies thereof, as well as Chetniks. In November 1944, during the Battle of Batina (now in Croatia), 1,237 men of the Red Army were killed fighting against the combined Axis forces. On the other hand, the 1st Cossack Cavalry Division and the 2nd Cossack Cavalry Division merged into the XV SS Cossack Cavalry Corps in February 1945 under German command and manned mainly by Cossacks from the USSR, from 1943 conducted successful tactical operations in Croatia against both Communist guerrillas and — from late 1944 — the Red Army.Mladenko Colić. Pregled operacija na jugoslovenskom ratištu: 1941-1945. — Beograd: Vojnoistorijski Institut, 1988, pp. 298—305.Александров К. М. Русское казачество во Второй мировой войне: трагедия на Драве, декабрь 1944 г. Новый часовой, 2001, pp. 118—139. Also fighting on the territory of the NDH from October 1944 — against the Communist partisans and the Soviet troops — were the retreating units of the Russian Protective Corps, whose commander, Russian general Boris Shteifon, died in Zagreb on 30 April 1945.
The defeat of the NDH in mid-May 1945 was followed by mass killings of Croat prisoners and the establishment later that year of a pro-Soviet (until mid-1948) one-party Communist Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia, the People's Republic of Croatia being one of its constituent republics. The USSR maintained a consulate general in Zagreb.
Social scientists concurred that for most people in Croatia, a constituent republic of Yugoslavia until 1991 where the equality of ethnic Serbs and Croats, as constituent nations, was formally recognized in every aspect,Yugoslavia Through Documents: From Its Creation to Its Dissolution edited by Snežana Trifunovska, page 477, it says: "at the Second and Third sessions of the National Anti-Fascist Council of the Peoples Liberation of Croatia (ZAVNOH),..., the equality of the Serbs and the Croats, as constituent peoples of the federal unit of Croatia, were recognized in every respect." the dominant political narrative that tended to determine voting at elections, perpetuated their respective families′ political affiliation during WWII: either with Tito's Communist partisans, or supporters of the Nazi-backed Ustasha regime of the NDH, a schism in Croatia's society that had grown even wider since the consensus-based political goal of acceding to the EU was accomplished in 2013.As its government falls, Croatia is fighting about Communists and fascists again: A Balkan problem child is unable to stop squabbling, even on the football pitch The Economist, 21 June 2016. A number of prominent Croats in Socialist Yugoslavia had close ties with the USSR and these people's influence in the government of independent Croatia that emerged in 1991 continued thereafter.Boris Rašeta. Moskovska veza od Josipa Broza do danas. // 24sataExpress, 16 December 2016.Romano Bolković: Ruska Hrvatska
History 1990s