Russian President Vladimir Putin received the President of the Republika Srpska, Milorad Dodik, at the Kremlin on Tuesday, according to the Kremlin’s press secretary, Dmitri Peskow. The topics of their discussion were not disclosed by Peskow.
A video released by the Russian Presidential Administration shows Putin and Dodik shaking hands and then sitting at a table. Putin said, “I’m very glad to see you in Moscow.” Dodik had arrived in Moscow the previous day and had visited the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
The two leaders last met in October of last year at the BRICS summit in Kazan. Dodik is scheduled to attend the 80th anniversary of the Allied victory in World War II in Germany on May 9 of this year.
Dodik has been in the news recently due to an Interpol warrant issued against him and other officials of the Republika Srpska, at the request of Bosnia and Herzegovina. A court in Sarajevo had sentenced him to a year in prison in February, ruling that he had obstructed the decisions of the Bosnian Constitutional Court and had disregarded the authority of the international high representative, Christian Schmidt, a German diplomat. Russia has criticized the verdict, calling it a “purely political” decision by the Bosnian judiciary based on a “pseudo-law” pushed through by Schmidt.