📋 Tender Overview
First, the Minister of Defense called out the President of the Republic for revealing "classified information" when he spoke publicly about the number of members of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Croatia. And yesterday, the Ministry of Defense went a step further: it claims that disclosing data on the number of members of the Armed Forces of the People's Republic of Croatia is "treason". Therefore, the Ministry of Defense accused the President of the Republic of "treason". The Ministry of Defense announces its accusation unofficially, probably through its employees who have had their security clearance certificate revoked.
The Office of the President of the Republic has therefore decided to officially inform the Ministry of Defense that the data on the number of members of the Armed Forces have been publicly published and are publicly available in the Annual Report on Defense for 2024, which was prepared by the Ministry of Defense and personally signed by the Minister of Defense.
If the Minister of Defense and his officials do not know what is written in the Annual Report on Defense - and they obviously do not - we instruct them to read what is written in stations 23 and 24 in paragraph 1.4.1. To make it easier for them to search for "classified data", in the publicly published Annual Report on Defense the Minister of Defense wrote: "The number of the Ministry of Defense, which includes the Croatian Army on December 31, 2024, was 15,558 people: 13,814 active military personnel, of which 1,989 were women and 1,744 civil servants and civil servants, of which 899 were women."
And if the Ministry of Defense does not even know where the Annual Defense Report is, you can find it on the official website of the Croatian Parliament at the following link: https://www.sabor.hr/hr/sjednice-sabora/godisnje-izvjesce-o-obrani-za-2024-godinu-podnositeljica-vlada-republike-hrvatske
Equally, in the same place, I can find all the earlier Annual Reports on Defense, which are also public, and in which it is written not only how many members of the Armed Forces we have, but in the Annual Report on Defense for 2017 it is also written how many we should have.
In short, after the Ministry of Defense compiled and the Minister of Defense signed the Annual Report on Defense, which also includes data on the number of members of the Armed Forces, the same document was accepted by the Government of the Republic of Croatia at the session on May 2, 2025, and then discussed and accepted by the Croatian Parliament on June 6, 2025. The annual defense report, therefore, is a public document available to everyone, it is not classified as secret in any way, and therefore the information on the number of members of the Armed Forces of the People's Republic of Croatia contained in that report is not secret or "classified information" as claimed by the Minister of Defense.
And as for the unofficial accusations of "betrayal", we are waiting for the brave Ministry of Defense whistleblowers to come forward after, I guess, they receive arguments and evidence from their strategic partners from the Middle East who, interestingly enough, do not mind discussing military secrets in front of foreigners without a security clearance certificate.
