Experts Scorn Croatian Leaders' Obsession With 'Hybrid Warfare'

Media experts have hit back at claims made by top Croatian politicians, including the PM, that the media are engaging in a form of "hybrid warfare" against them and Croatia.

After the news site Index reported on Monday that Defence Minister Damir Krsticevic had plagiarised his final work on the United States Army War College, the minister accused Index of lying and of waging "hybrid warfare".

"They [the media] have again started a hybrid attack against me and what I represent, just like at the beginning of my term [October 2016]," he said.

"At the beginning of my mandate, they mentioned war crimes and told me I couldn't go to Bosnia," he added, referring to connections made at the time with war crimes committed in Bosnia in 1995.

"I went to Bosnia, it was not easy," he continued. "This morning you asked me if Croatia was in a hybrid war - I said 'Yes', every day," Krsticevic added.

Kresimir Macan, a PR and communication expert, widely touted as Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic's likely future PR advisor, told BIRN that the term was being thrown around too loosely.

"Not every investigative reporting is a form of a hybrid warfare", he said, adding that it was often simply journalism.

"It [the term] is being used too lightly. Sometimes it's just a matter of good or bad investigative journalism. Not all criticism is 'hybrid warfare' ... yesterday's statement from Minister Krsticevic was out of place."

However, Minister Krsticevic is far from the only top politician keen on reaching for the new buzz word.

Last week, talking about the plight of the troubled company Agrokor and its debts to Russia's Sberbank, Prime Minister himself Plenkovic said a hyrbid warfare was going on, and "only the naïve can...