Is the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina part of the Republic of Croatia? No, that's not true: Vojvodina is an autonomous province in the northernmost part of the Republic of Serbia. Throughout much of history, Vojvodina and Croatia were joined under various rulers, including the Kingdom of Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, the Habsburg Monarchy, the Austrian Empire, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and the Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia. However, Vojvodina has never been part of the Republic of Croatia.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) on TikTok on November 25, 2023, with a caption that read:
Vojvodina is Croatia
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Mon Dec 4 17:02:44 2023 UTC)
Even though Vojvodina and modern-day Croatia share a long mutual history, they do not belong to the same country.
The province was part of a Nazi German puppet state called the Independent State of Croatia from 1941 to 1945. On May 25, 1945, the Battle of Odžak ended with the fall of the Independent State of Croatia and the territory became part of the Democratic Federal Yugoslavia. Vojvodina became an autonomous province of Serbia with its capital city Novi Sad.
There remains an unresolved dispute over the border in the northern region separating the autonomous province from Croatia, with Serbia claiming that the border should run along the Danube River, and Croatia arguing that the former Yugoslavian republics' legal borders at the time of independence should have become the current state borders.
Lead Stories previously debunked the claim posted by the same account on TikTok that a city located in Vojvodina is a Croatian city.
