Do we like them?

Do we like Zoran Milanović?

Our score: 5 out of 10. A solid record on same-sex partnership rights sits next to a long habit of public insults and some very ugly rhetoric aimed at Israeli officials.

Zoran Milanović is a former prime minister who now sits in the presidential palace as Croatia's most popular politician. He won a second term in January 2025 with nearly 74 per cent of the vote against the ruling party's candidate. AP described his record as PM as mixed and his combative style as reminiscent of Donald Trump's.

On LGBTQ+ rights, the record is better than you'd guess from the swagger. In 2024 he received members of Zagreb Pride and the march's organising committee, who raised plans for an LGBTIQ centre in Zagreb. They thanked him for the Life Partnership Act, which his government proposed. That's a genuine tick, and the page found no campaigning from him against trans people.

The temper is the other side of him. In 2020 the European Federation of Journalists and the Croatian Journalists' Association urged him to stop attacking the media, saying he had publicly insulted outlets, reporters and opposition figures. He told RTL that people at Index.hr were not journalists. The article carries no reply from him.

On Ukraine and Russia he is a lightning rod. He blocked five Croatian officers from going to a NATO-linked training mission for Ukraine and pledged never to approve Croatian soldiers for any NATO mission there. PM Andrej Plenković has called him pro-Russian and a threat to Croatia's standing; Milanović denies being pro-Russian. Where you land depends on whether you read it as sovereign caution or as doing Moscow's work.

In March 2026 Israel's foreign minister Gideon Sa'ar publicly accused him of antisemitism after he attacked Israel's ambassador. Milanović doubled down at a Zagreb chess tournament, saying of Israeli officials: “These are bad people.” His defenders say it's about Israel's government and its wars; critics say the language was over the line. We'd call it harsh, and the antisemitism charge is Sa'ar's allegation.

The latest stoush is petty but telling. He told the army it wouldn't march in Paris on Bastille Day without his order, citing France's treatment of Croatia, so the government sent an Interior Ministry anti-terror unit instead. Plenković called his outlook “semi-provincial”. It shows a man who treats the constitution as a weapon in a long feud.