Sisak-Moslavina County

Three rivers converge at Sisak—the Sava, Kupa, and Odra—creating the hydrological conditions that made this site strategic since Roman times, when Siscia served as a major military and administrative center. The confluence also created Lonjsko Polje, one of Europe's largest wetlands, where seasonal flooding sustains ecosystems that have survived everywhere else only in protected reserves.

The same river access that benefited the Romans enabled Yugoslavia's industrial planners. Sisak became home to Croatia's largest steel factory and largest oil refinery, importing raw materials by barge and rail, exporting heavy industrial products. The city grew around smokestacks in ways that few Croatian settlements did. Then the war erased the industrial logic.

The 1991-95 conflict devastated Sisak-Moslavina more thoroughly than almost any other county. The Banija subregion became a frontline; Serbian forces shelled Sisak regularly, targeting the refineries that symbolized Croatian economic capacity. Fighting around Petrinja and Glina destroyed entire villages. Postwar, authorities reconstructed 24,930 buildings at a cost of €342 million—the scale of destruction measured in concrete and steel.

Population collapse followed. The Serbs who made up much of Banija's prewar population largely did not return; those who remained often left for Western Europe. Net migration hit -1,093 in 2009 alone. The county's 2021 population of 140,131 represents one of Croatia's steepest declines. Heavy industry survives but cannot employ the workers it once did. Lonjsko Polje attracts birdwatchers and eco-tourists, but ecological preservation cannot replace manufacturing jobs. By 2026, Sisak-Moslavina exemplifies the compound crisis: war damage, deindustrialization, and demographic collapse reinforcing each other.