Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik has made no secret of his closeness to Russian President Vladimir Putin. It is considered certain that Moscow will support him.
While Moscow is waging war in Ukraine, it is simultaneously fueling the government’s conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina with Serb separatists there. Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik has made no secret of his closeness to Russian President Vladimir Putin. It is taken for granted that Moscow will support him in his separatist plans. Western observers warn that the hard-won peace in the Balkan country is in jeopardy.
The latest alarm call came from US Democratic Senator Chris Murphy. “If Putin (in Ukraine) is cornered, he will look for other places where he can get victories. And one of them could be Bosnia,” he told US broadcaster CNN, speaking of “a very worrying time for Bosnia.” In March, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg called Bosnia a possible target for “new Russian interventions”.
About 100,000 people died in the interethnic war in Bosnia from 1992 to 1995. Since then, the country has been divided into a Croatian-Muslim federation and a Serbian “entity”, the Republika Srpska (RS), most of whom feel very close. of Russia’s “older brother”. This is why Bosnia has not adhered to Western sanctions against Russia for attacking Ukraine.
Fraternal relations with Serbs in the Balkans
For centuries, Russia has maintained deep ties of brotherhood with Balkan Serbs – due to their shared Slavic and Orthodox heritage and their alliances during the world wars. The Kremlin saw the West’s and NATO’s intervention in the Balkans in the 1990s – first in Bosnia and then against Serbia during the Kosovo war – as a humiliating provocation. Since then, Moscow has been trying to increase its influence over Bosnian Serbs.
In remarks similar to Putin’s rhetoric before the attack on Ukraine, the Russian ambassador in Sarajevo warned of Moscow’s “reaction” should Bosnia join NATO. The Kremlin does not recognize the international community’s High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina, who oversees compliance with the peace agreement. This is currently the German Christian Schmidt. Russia recently protested against “increasing attempts to rewrite the principles” of the agreement “to the benefit of the EU and NATO and to the detriment” of Bosnian Serbs.
“It is clear that Russia has now openly broken with the West in Bosnia,” says Florian Bieber, a Balkan expert at the University of Graz. The “passivity” of the West has contributed to the country’s instability by allowing Serbian leader Dodik to repeatedly cross red lines over the years.
Destabilization due to the absence of the EU
Srecko Latal, editor-in-chief of the regional investigative journalism network (BIRN), shares this assessment. “The Balkans have been destabilized mainly by the absence of the EU,” he says. This allowed third parties like Russia, China and Turkey to fill the vacuum.
But recently the West has paid more attention to the Balkan country. “It seems to me that this Russian threat has really forced the US and the EU to take a slightly more serious approach,” says Latal. One of the constants of Austria’s foreign policy is that Austria is committed to rapidly bringing the Western Balkan States closer to the European Union. Other EU countries are more hesitant here.
Washington imposed sanctions on Dodik in January, and London followed suit in April. The EU refrained from punitive measures but almost doubled its military presence in Bosnia to around 1,100 men and women. A “precautionary measure”, as its commander, the Austrian General Anton Wessely, explained. The Foreign Ministry in Berlin is also considering sending Bundeswehr soldiers to Bosnia again. Coalition circles recently said that a contingent could support the EU’s EUFOR Althea stabilization mission ahead of elections scheduled for October.
(APA/AFP/Rusmir Smajilhodzic)