‘A serious crisis’ — pro-Russian leader in Bosnia threatening peace in the Balkans

BANJA LUKA, Bosnia and Herzegovina — When a court convicted Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik of defying an international peace envoy in February, it was supposed to end his career in politics.

He faced not only jail time, but a ban on holding public office.

But three months later, little has changed.

Dodik remains at the helm of Republika Srpska, one of two autonomous entities that make up the nation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Despite an international warrant for his arrest, Dodik has repeatedly visited one of his biggest backers, Russian President Vladimir Putin, in Moscow, using those visits to fan the flames of ethnic separatism at home.

Dodik’s embrace of the Russian strongman emphasizes the Kremlin’s outsized role in destabilizing Bosnia and Herzegovina.

But it also reflects a local struggle: After years of growing tensions, Dodik is now in open confrontation with the central government and using Russia to bolster his position.

Experts say that risks dragging the country into the greatest crisis since it was torn apart by civil war and genocide in 1992-1995.

“The situation is tense and unpredictable,” said Nebojsa Vukanovic, a member of the political opposition in Republika Srpska.

Dodik’s office did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.

Moscow’s man in the Balkans

This year alone, Dodik has already made two visits to Russia.

He first turned up in Moscow in March. Then, he returned on May 9, as Russia marked Victory Day.

In an interview with the Russian state-owned news agency TASS, he described Putin as a “person who understands perfectly well where the world is” and praised the invasion of Ukraine.

Though the trips were international, experts believe the motivation is domestic.

With roughly 1.2 million people, Republika Srpska comprises a third of the population of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The vast majority of the region’s residents are ethnic Serbs.

Dodik was first elected the region’s prime minister in 1998. Since then, he has come to dominate its politics.

During that time, he has often relied on threats of secession to garner support among the region’s ethnic Serb majority, according to Aleksandar Savanovic, a political sciences professor at the University of Banja Luka, the regional capital.

Until 2022, such threats were “a good way to win elections without real plans to create Republika Srpska as an independent state,” he said.

Then, around the time when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Dodik saw an opening to solidify Moscow’s support for his regime.

Savanovic suggests the Bosnian Serb leader believed the Kremlin would look favorably on a more brazen secessionist policy. “It was a good moment to protect his power,” he said.

Since then, Dodik has held multiple meetings with Putin and has become one of the Russian invasion’s most vocal supporters in Europe. Much to the chagrin of Western leaders, his comments regularly echo false Kremlin talking points – including the “extermination of the Russian population in Ukraine” and Ukraine’s “bombings” in the country’s eastern regions.

Ismet Fatih Cancar, a former advisor to the minister of security of Bosnia and Herzegovina and an expert on international security in the Balkans, emphasizes that similar ethnic allegations of repressions against Bosnia’s Serb population underpin Dodik’s secessionist aims.

Those claims date back to the 1990s, when Serb nationalists’ attempt to preserve an ethnically homogenous state fueled a civil war and ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

But Cancar believes they are “completely out of reality.”

“I think Bosnians very well understand what’s happening in Ukraine because we went through the same thing in the 1990s,” he said.

Dodik isn’t the only one who stands to gain from efforts to destabilize Bosnia and Herzegovina. Cancar thinks Russia would also benefit “from having another conflict that will divert attention from Ukraine.”

Showdown in court

Although separatist rhetoric is not new in Republika Srpska, the tipping point came in 2023, when Dodik supported the passage of a controversial measure to suspend the rulings of Bosnia’s Constitutional Court inside Republika Srpska.

That threatened to undermine the foundations of peace in the country.

Under the Dayton Accords, which ended the civil war in 1995, a high representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina is tasked with overseeing the civilian implementation of the agreement. Since 2021, German politician Christian Schmidt has held that position.

Controversially, the high representative has the power to impose and annul laws.

On July 1, 2023, Schmidt did just that: He annulled the Republika Srpska judicial measure against the Constitutional Court and amended the criminal code to make defying the “constitutional order” a crime.

Dodik signed the measure Schmidt annulled into law anyway. Prosecutors filed an indictment against him the following month.

In February, following a lengthy trial, a court in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, found Dodik guilty of defying the high representative’s orders, sentencing him to one year in jail and banning him from office for six years.

On April 23, state police attempted to arrest Dodik, but were repelled by Republika Srpska police.

“This is a serious political and constitutional crisis,” the Office of the High Representative said in a statement to the Kyiv Independent. It considers the law and Dodik’s actions a “de facto coup d’etat” that threatens constitutional order and Bosnia and Herzegovina’s bid for EU membership.

Walking the streets of Banja Luka, it’s not difficult to understand the danger.

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Alongside Russia launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Moscow has also ramped up its hybrid attacks across Europe. In 2024 alone, Russia could be behind around 100 “suspicious incidents” in Europe, Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky claimed. Last month, the Dutch intelligence said that Moscow keeps stepping up its attacks

The Kyiv IndependentKateryna Denisova

The city is filled with advertisements for Dodik’s political party, the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats. Billboards bear his image and push his narrative. One reads: “They tried me because they couldn’t put a million Serbs in the courtroom!”

Their effect is less clear.

According to Savanovic, Dodik’s defiance of the country’s peace mechanisms has actually alienated his supporters, many of whom do not want a return to the conflict of the 1990s.

“I don’t know a single person in Banja Luka who supports Mr. Dodik, even in his political party,” he said.

“He expected more support from the people,” said Tanja Topic, a journalist and the head of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in the city.

Internationally, the picture is hardly rosy. Even President Aleksandar Vucic of Serbia, usually a reliable ally, is currently distracted by his own domestic political crisis, Topic added. And Dodik’s gamble that U.S. President Donald Trump would adopt a more accommodating stance on his nationalistic policies has not paid off.

She believes that Dodik’s visits to Russia were an attempt to shore up support among his remaining allies and supporters.

“He used these opportunities to create a pro-Russia narrative in Republika Srpska,” Topic said. “Putin is, in this logic of Serbian peoples, the biggest politician in the world.”

Signs of support for Russia are common in Banja Luka. A stand selling T-shirts to tourists features one with Putin’s face alongside those displaying Serb nationalistic slogans. There is a Putin-themed restaurant in town, and Russia opened a branch of its embassy here in the summer of 2024.

In 2018, local officials announced that they would begin construction of a Russian cultural center.

On a recent visit to the planned site, construction was in full swing. At its center is an Orthodox Church covered in a web of scaffolding. The metal skeletons of two onion domes lay in the dust nearby. Officials recently said that the complex will be complete this summer.

Dangerous territory

Russia’s influence in the region may not be merely diplomatic and financial.

Last fall, reports that Moldova had uncovered a pro-Kremlin hybrid warfare operation shined a spotlight on Republika Srpska. Moldovan authorities said that Russia used camps in the region to train agitators to provoke instability in Moldova around its October presidential election.

Officials in Republika Srpska have denied the existence of such camps. Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Defense Ministry did not respond to requests for comment or interviews with officials.

But the scandal emphasized the high stakes of Russian influence in Republika Srpska.

Now, no one is sure how the current crisis may play out.

While few believe there will be a return to violence, experts told the Kyiv Independent that tensions can continue to escalate and small-scale conflict is possible.

Dodik, meanwhile, shows no sign of backing down. In March, he announced that Republika Srpska would form an independent border police force, a potential major escalation.

“If we accept this as a status quo, (Dodik) will take this as a form of support or silent acquiescence to what he’s done and will move on the offensive,” said Cancar, the international security expert.

That could mean the Republika Srpska’s slow integration into Serbia and restrictions on the movement of people, goods, and services along Bosnia and Herzegovina’s internal boundaries.

“And then at that point,” Cancar added, “all bets are off.”