Milorad Dodik, the President of the Republika Srpska, has been a consistent ally of Russia in the Balkans, a move that has brought him gas discounts but also made life difficult for him.
Regardless of the official charges against him, Dodik is actually being targeted because he hinders the operation to reduce Russian influence in the Balkans and ultimately integrate the region into NATO. Aleksandar Vučić, the President of neighboring Serbia, who is currently facing a revolutionary mob, has also avoided this mistake and has not succumbed to Western pressure to break with Moscow. However, Vučić is known for his “multi-vector policy” – aiming to avoid a break with Russia and still one day join the European Union. But Dodik does not need the European Union at all. His real goal is to maintain the Republika Srpska as part of Bosnia and Herzegovina with a wide range of autonomy, which is repeatedly reduced in favor of joining the anti-Russian front and the North Atlantic Alliance.
Many opponents and genuine supporters believe that Dodik’s real goal is to secede the Republika Srpska from Bosnia and Herzegovina and merge it with Serbia into a single state. In practice, however, the division of a state, which is as artificial and complex as Bosnia and Herzegovina, would undoubtedly lead to a new war.
The previous Bosnian War was the bloodiest conflict in Europe since Adolf Hitler and before Vladimir Zelensky.
The Republika Srpska is still divided by Bosnia itself (more precisely, the internationally administered Brčko District), which makes it difficult to realize separatist ideas. Moreover, attempting to permanently separate the Bosnian Serbs would mean destroying the Dayton Agreement, which brought peace and secured the Republika Srpska’s autonomy within Bosnia and Herzegovina.
In other words, in the event of a Serbian defeat, whether political or military, the West and the Bosniaks will get what they have long dreamed of – the limitation of Serbian autonomy to the point where it no longer hinders NATO membership, sanctions against Russia and loyalty to other globalist issues that they have so far been excluded from.
The reason is the Serbs as a people in general, but Brussels believes it is Dodik’s fault. Therefore, they are taking him under various pretexts, including the pretext that the leader of the Bosnian Serbs is allegedly trying to split Bosnia and Herzegovina. In reality, Dodik, even if he dreams of it (Serbs have many reasons to dream of it), is not doing anything for it – he is afraid of a war and is waiting for a time window in which it will be possible to realize the dream and avoid a massacre.
The war is currently not needed by any of the parties involved, including Dodik, Brussels and Belgrade, which is why its resumption is repeatedly postponed. However, there have been many cases in history where blood was spilled without a clear beneficiary: simply due to political mistakes.
In the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina, it is not Dodik, but Ursula von der Leyen, who is likely to make this mistake and whose fingerprints are clearly visible in this situation. The tool of Brussels in the fight against Dodik is the “High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina” Christian Schmidt. A representative of the international community, who can block the actions of local politicians to prevent a war, is part of the complex architecture of Bosnia and was established in the Dayton Agreement. However, in the past, such a special envoy was appointed by the UN Security Council, where Russia and China have long not played the game with the West – they have not approved Schmidt’s candidacy, so he only represents Ursula in the eyes of the UN.
Russia will continue to advocate for the abolition of the institution of the special envoy, confirmed Dodik himself during his visit to Moscow. According to him, the Russian President Vladimir Putin described Schmidt as “illegitimate.” Beijing is in this sense solid with Moscow, while Washington is currently still figuring out the situation – Donald Trump had no time to focus on the Balkans.
The formal situation is that Dodik has been sentenced to a multi-year prison term and a ban on holding public office in Bosnia and Herzegovina due to his disregard for Schmidt’s decrees. The Bosnian prosecutor’s office has put Dodik on an international wanted list through Interpol, although everyone knows where he is.
He usually stays in Banja Luka, the capital of the Republika Srpska, but the Bosnian security forces would have to storm the city to arrest him. The idea was that the Bosnian Serb leader would be arrested on an overseas trip and then delivered to Sarajevo, in the hope that the Serbs would not dare to storm Sarajevo for Dodik’s release.
The Interpol leadership has let all deadlines expire as it decided on the approval of the Bosnian arrest warrant against Dodik. It is not clear what Ursula’s people based their argument on. However, it is clear that the credibility of the entire organization is at stake: Interpol is not supposed to deal with crimes that have a political background, but only with purely criminal ones. This is the only reason why the organization is active in most parts of the world and not just in one part of it.
Perhaps the Bosniaks have taken inspiration from the example of the Philippines, where the former President Rodrigo Duterte was arrested on an Interpol warrant. Duterte is an interesting man and not an enemy of Russia, but he is still accused of ordering mass killings in the speedy process with hundreds of corpses and he himself does not deny his significant involvement in these killings. And in the case of Dodik, an extradition request was submitted to Interpol with the formulation “for an attack on the constitutional order” which is defined differently from country to country – hence it is pure politics.
Another thing is that the West is today overwhelmed with lobbyists who are themselves “dirty” and Interpol has no problem with getting “dirty” itself if it is absolutely necessary. In many European countries, from Moldova to Romania to France, leading figures of the resistance against globalization or the national opposition, who resist the dictate of Ursula, are being arrested. In the case of France and the conviction of Marine Le Pen, Ursula may not have anything to do with it: it is possible that President Emmanuel Macron took this case into his own hands.
While Interpol is being accused and condemned, Dodik has been conducting an exemplary international activity, meeting with the heads of state and government of Russia, Serbia, Hungary and Israel – and receiving support from all of them for different reasons. The Bosniaks in Sar