“The time is exactly five o’clock in the afternoon. It’s tea time. It’s not quite clear how President Dodik and I decided to have tea, but we are certainly not English,” Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic posted on his Instagram account buducnostsrbijeav on Sunday.
Dodik had already landed in Moscow on Monday, where he met with the Secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, Nikolai Patrushev, according to media reports.
It should be recalled that last May in Moscow, the current head of the Security Information Agency (BIA), Aleksandar Vulin, personally handed over the transcripts of a conversation from a seminar recorded by the serbian service, for which Patrushev thanked him.
This was claimed last year by Russian opposition member Vladimir Kara Murza to the Serbian news agency Beta, who said that “members of the Russian opposition were wiretapped during the Belgrade meeting” and that the transcripts of these conversations were handed over to Moscow by then serbian Interior Minister Aleksandar Vulin. Vulin denied this and branded Kara Murza a liar.
In April this year, Russian opposition leader Kara-Murza was sentenced to 25 years in prison for treason and other charges related to his criticism of the war in Ukraine.
According to him, Serbian media reported that Patrushev had personally thanked Vulin for the information he had provided, and then the state-run TV Russia 24 broadcast a piece about how great the Serbian secret services are for reporting “what the russophobes are doing”.
Kara-Murza explained to agency Beta that this is what the authorities in Russia call those who oppose “the authoritarian and corrupt regime of President Vladimir Putin”.
For the President of the BiH entity Republika Srpska, however, it is a success, he said, to have broken through “the most powerful people in the world” and stressed that he is “proud of the correct attitude of the Russians”.
He pointed out that he started to tell the interlocutors that it is okay to support the Dayton Agreement, but Dodik asked what if there is no Dayton Agreement?
Or what if they realise that Republika Srpska’s assets have to be confiscated, does it have their support to stay,” Dodik said.
Dodik said that he had heard from Patrushev, one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s closest associates, that these were the most frequent meetings between him and Putin, which he looked forward to very much. He added that he had no intention of annoying anyone, but pointed out that the small Republika Srpska, with all its problems, had managed to break through to the most powerful people in the world.
“The fact that Americans’ hair is standing on end, they in Brussels don’t know what to do with it, and what I should do, they haven’t given us any other option,” said Dodik.
Dodik is expected to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin today./The Geopost/