MOSCOW, June 23. /TASS/. Croatia and Slovenia froze relations with Russia, but someday they will have to restore those ties if "common sense" prevails, Director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Fourth European Department Yury Pilipson told TASS in an interview.

"It is up to those who brought them to the freezing point to initiate the relation’s restoration. Of course, a change will not be possible unless common sense prevails in Zagreb and Ljubljana," he said.

According to him, the hostile stance of these countries toward Russia after the beginning of the Ukrainian conflict aligns with assisting Kiev with weapons and ejecting employees of Russian diplomatic missions. "They joined the barrage of unsubstantiated accusations against us, while providing assistance to the Kiev regime - weapons included - in addition to expelling most of our embassies’ staff. You can't call this sort of behavior anything other than unfriendly and defiant," he said.

Pilipson noted that Moscow has always seen Croatia and Slovenia as "good partners," recounting the past 30 years of those countries' diplomatic relations with Russia. "We maintained a close political dialogue, developed mutually beneficial trade, economic and investment cooperation and broad cultural and humanitarian ties. By the way, May 30th was the 30th anniversary of our diplomatic relations with Croatia and Slovenia, and over the years, we have accumulated a solid, positive history. We were preparing to celebrate the anniversary with dignity," Pilipson concluded.