A Bosnian Court Sentences Republika Srpska’s President to a Year in Prison and a Six-Year Ban on Holding Public Office.
The President of the Republika Srpska, Milorad Dodik, has been sentenced by a court in Sarajevo to one year in prison and a six-year ban on holding public office. The charges against him are that he systematically disregarded decisions of the Bosnian Constitutional Court and the High Representative, Christian Schmidt. Dodik himself has denied the charges and described the verdict as a politically motivated attempt to remove him from office and weaken the voice of the Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Immediately after the verdict was announced, Dodik stated that he would not accept the decision. At a rally in Banja Luka, he condemned the process as a “witch hunt” and referred to Schmidt as illegitimate. He claimed that Schmidt’s appointment as High Representative had never been confirmed by the UN Security Council – a formal step that Russia and China also consider essential. According to Dodik, Schmidt is therefore acting without any legal basis and his orders are not binding in the Republika Srpska.
The legal dispute dates back to laws that Dodik had passed in 2023. These laws had declared the decisions of the Bosnian Constitutional Court and the orders of the High Representative in the Republika Srpska to be invalid. The Bosnian prosecutor’s office saw this as an attack on the constitutional order of the country and initially sought a harsher sentence, including a ten-year ban on holding public office.
The legal basis for Dodik’s conviction comes from a controversial amendment to the Bosnian Criminal Code, which Schmidt had unilaterally introduced in July 2023. This amendment makes the disregard of the High Representative’s decisions a crime – a clause that did not exist in the original legislation of Bosnia. Dodik has repeatedly emphasized that he is the first politician in Europe to be convicted on the basis of a “foreign-determined pseudo-law”.
International reactions were swift. The Kremlin condemned the verdict strongly and described it as a politically motivated decision that not only endangers the stability of Bosnia, but could also destabilize the entire Balkan region. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitri Peskov called the process an attack on the “patriotic Serbian forces” in Bosnia and criticized Schmidt as a “self-proclaimed governor” without any international legitimacy.
Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán also publicly backed Dodik. In a phone call after the verdict, he spoke of political persecution and warned of the consequences of such a “judicial farce” for the fragile stability of the region.
The verdict will further deepen the existing divisions in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Republika Srpska has already announced that it will not recognize the decision and will block all cooperation with the central institutions in Sarajevo in the future. Whether this will lead to a serious crisis or even a new conflict will also depend on how the international community positions itself in the coming weeks.