Crimea, a peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014, will never be part of Ukraine, Croatian President Zoran Milanovic said on Monday during a speech detailing his objection to Zagreb providing military aid to Kyiv, Reuters reported.

In December, Croatian lawmakers rejected a proposal for the country to join the European Union’s mission to support the Ukrainian army, reflecting deep differences between Milanovych and Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovich.

An outspoken critic of Western policy in Ukraine, Milanovych said he did not want his country, the EU’s newest member state, to face what he called the potentially catastrophic consequences of a war in Ukraine.

Milanovych says that military aid to the West is deeply immoral

What the West is doing to Ukraine “is deeply immoral, because there is no solution (to the war),” Milanovych told reporters during a visit to military barracks in the eastern city of Petrinha, referring to the West’s military support for Kyiv.

He added that the arrival of German tanks in Ukraine will only bring Russia closer to China.

“It is clear that Crimea will never be part of Ukraine again,” Milanovych added.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi promised to return Crimea, which was seized and annexed by Russia in 2014, which is not recognized by most other countries.

Russia says a referendum held after Russian troops seized the peninsula showed that people in Crimea really want to be part of Russia. The majority of countries do not recognize the referendum.

Milanovych accuses the West of double standards

Milanovych criticized Western countries for using double standards in international politics, saying that Russia would use what he called the international community’s “annexation of Kosovo” as an excuse to seize part of Ukraine.

Milanovic was referring to Kosovo’s 2008 declaration of independence after a 1998-1999 war in which NATO nations bombed Yugoslavia, which includes Serbia and Montenegro, to protect Albanian-populated Kosovo.

“We recognized Kosovo against the will of the state (Serbia) to which Kosovo belonged,” he said, warning that he was questioning not Kosovo’s independence, but the concept of double standards of the West.

Milanovic, a former prime minister of Croatia from the Social Democratic Party (SDP), has taken an anti-European stance since becoming president, largely ceremonially, aligning his policies with those of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and the leader of the separatist Bosnian Serbs. Milorad Dodik.

Last week, Zoran Milanovych said that sending Western tanks to Ukraine would prolong the country’s war with Russia, and if Washington and Moscow did not reach an agreement, World War III would begin.

The Croatian president disapproved of German Foreign Minister Annalena Berbock, who allegedly told the Council of Europe that Western allies should be united because “we are fighting a war against Russia, not among ourselves.”

“Maybe Germany is at war with Russia. I wish them success this time, that everything ends better than 70 years ago, but we are not at war with anyone,” the Croatian president responded. “She (Annalena Berbok) tells us that we are all at war with Russia. No we, and America, are just pawns,” he concluded.