Sonja Biserko interviewed by Anna Di Lellio, “Ukraine like Bosnia, will end up torn in two”

Former United Nations consultant Ana Di Lellio, known for her contribution to post-war Kosovo, has interviewed former Serbian diplomat turned human rights activist Sonja Biserko.

They discussed the situation of Russian invasion of Ukraine, drawing a parallel with the situation in the Balkans in the 1990s, at a time when Slobodan Milosevic shook a peninsula with his hegemonic initiatives.

Below you can read the full interview conducted by Di Lellio and published on the blog FoglieViaggi:

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I have been thinking for days about the ominous similarities between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, who died in custody in The Hague in 2006, and the current rulers of Serbia, Milosevic’s direct political successors. There are also many similarities between Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and the wars that characterized the fall of Yugoslavia. And remembering that much of what I understood about the latter I learned from Sonja Biserko, I thought I would listen to what she thinks. A Yugoslav diplomat, Sonja resigned when Milosevic, who came to power in the League of Communists and became president of Serbia on the eve of the awakening of Serbian nationalism, plunged the country into a series of wars against the republics of the federation: Slovenia initially, then Croatia and Bosnia, and finally the Serb Autonomous Province of Kosovo. For thirty years Sonja has been committed to the protection of democracy and human rights, establishing and chairing the Helsinki Committee in Belgrade.

Sonja answers immediately on the phone. She is recovering at home in an apartment in Novo Belgrade full of plants, books and family relics. I have been a guest very often during my stay in Belgrade and I remember well a picture of her father, a partisan, near Tito. I hear a dog barking at home. It’s Ash, I do not know, he must have come after “Barack” and “Hillary” died. Sonja loves dogs and often rescues them from the streets of Belgrade, not very friendly to animals. But as always with her, after her greetings we immediately come to politics.

I called you because if I look at the map of the Republika Srpska in Bosnia and that of the advance of the Russian troops in Ukraine, I am struck by how similar they are: two crescents of territory contiguous to Serbia and Russia respectively, ready for annexation. I would like to know what you think.

It’s the Daytonization of Ukraine, that’s what I think. [ In the Dayton peace accords in 1995, Bosnia was divided into two parts: the Federation, with Bosnians and Croats, and the Republika Sprska, with Serbs ]. Russia wants Ukraine to end up like Bosnia and the West can do nothing to stop it. You think that in the beginning the US even offered Zelensky to escape. They didn’t understand anything. What does Dayton-ization mean? That, like Bosnia, Ukraine will be divided into two ethnically homogeneous territories, and will remain unstable in the long term. For a long time, the borders of Ukraine and Russia will be indefinite.

Looking at the two maps it occurs to me that Mariupol, like Srebrenica, prevents the connection between two occupied areas. It was for this reason that Srebrenica had to be completely emptied of Bosnians. Is the same happening in Mariupol? Or will they stop sooner? Before Srebrenica there were countless meetings to negotiate a truce that never came.

How do you believe in negotiations with Russia? They always lie. The Russians are stalling, they are taking their time because they are regrouping and will soon return to the attack. How is it possible that with all these meetings there is not a time when they agree on something? This war started years ago when Russia annexed Crimea and no one reacted. It was the beginning of a scenario very similar to that of Serbia in Bosnia. But it is likely that Putin will not stop at the Donbass. His ambition is to occupy the whole country or cut Ukraine completely out of the sea to make his life impossible.

Do you think Serbia remains allied with Russia because they have so much in common?

Of course, they are very similar. Even the mythologizing of history as the nation’s founding myth is similar. But let’s get to the news. Putin created the ” Russian World ” which is mirrored by the ” Serbian World. “. The first started as an idea in the early twentieth century and then became a Foundation in 2007. The second was founded in 2013. Both are based on the idea that the nation is divided, dispersed into different states, and must first be brought together culturally, then eventually politically and territorially. The idea is that Russian and Serbian language and culture are important not only for the nation – wherever Russian is spoken there is Russia and the same is true for Serbia – but also for global culture; they must be defended and spread against the corrupt and corrupting values ​​of the West such as democracy, pluralism, and human rights.

Since 1997 Serbia has been thinking about how to integrate the Republika Srpska, the part of Bosnia where only Serbs live, first culturally then politically. Behind these ideas is the Orthodox, the Russian and the Serbian Churches. In Russia everything is very clear, Patriarch Kirill said: Ukraine, Russia and Belarus are part of Holy Russia. Both Russia and Serbia do not accept the reality, which is the loss of the power they once had, and have become a factor of great instability. For Russia, the aggression against Ukraine is not the first expression of this idea, the first is Georgia.

So, Russia and Serbia are two twin countries?

Not exactly. Some things are changing. Russia has penetrated the Balkans a lot from 2012 to the present. It happened after the West began to lose interest in the Balkans following the financial crisis of 2008. Both the European Union and the US left the Balkans. In Serbia, Russia is very present today. Let us remember that the whole region depends on Moscow for energy, but Russia is also culturally present, for example with the Russian-Balkan Institute. In Belgrade, Aleksander Dugin is a philosopher of reference. Can you believe they built a statue of Tsar Nicholas II in front of the presidential palace in Belgrade?

Here must be a hand of the Church. The Romanovs are considered martyrs by the Serbian Orthodox Church, I remember seeing a photo of them in a monastery.

The Church is certainly a leader in this process. But she is not the only one. The young people in schools, universities, are all pro-Russians. In the media, in public discourse, the idea dominates that Serbia, like Russia, has been a victim of the West, so the Serbs do not see the other victims. Thirty years ago, they did not see the sufferings of the Bosnians and Albanians, today they do not see those of the Ukrainians. Serbian tabloids at the beginning of the war came out with these headlines, “Ukraine attacks Russia.” Now they have calmed down a little.

So, Russia is the great protector of Serbia?

This cannot be said either. Look at what is happening in Montenegro, where through pro-Serbian political parties, such as the Democratic Front, Russia is exerting pressure on the President of Parliament to call elections before the end of the legislature, a kind of confrontation with Milo Djukanovic and his party, which created a sovereign Montenegro and part of NATO. The Russians want to destroy Montenegro, to prove that it is not a sustainable country, they want to revoke the recognition of Kosovo, to leave NATO. Quint (the NATO contact group for the Balkans: USA, Germany, Italy, France, Great Britain) had to intervene. Amfilohije, primate of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Montenegro, said that Montenegro is only a territory, it is not a nation, but a small state invented by the communists. Only Serbia is a state. We find the same discourse in Ukraine, not a nation, invented by Lenin.

And in Bosnia the Russians are exerting pressure through Milorad Dodik [ President of Republika Srpska ] who is a real threat to the integrity of Bosnia. Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic is having a hard time controlling Dodik, and is wondering how loyal he is to Belgrade.

What does all this mean for Europe’s stability?

That Putin has already opened another front in the Balkans and Europe has not noticed. Dacic (President of the National Assembly of Serbia, spokesman for the Socialist Party, which is now an ally of the Progressive Party nationalists) is Russia’s main supporter, against sanctions, of a neutral stance on the war. I have already talked about Montenegro, there is a deep state in Northern Macedonia, not to mention Kosovo, where they always try to stabilize the country. Quint criticized Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti for not allowing Kosovo Serbs to vote at home in Serbia’s elections. But Kurti only asked that in the name of reciprocity between the countries he could discuss the terms of these elections with Serbia.

The criticisms are always dictated by political realism, by geopolitics, which do not allow us to understand anything. We are flooded with geopolitical texts and understand nothing. Perhaps NATO could have expanded more slowly, but that is not the problem. Ukraine pledged to neutrality in 1994. Russia had been preparing for this war for years, and today it has changed the narrative. The problem is no longer NATO but the de-Nazification of Ukraine. The speech is the same as that of Serbia thirty years ago: we go to war with the Slovenes because they are domobranzi, with the Croats ustasha, with the Albanians ballista, all collaborators of the Nazis. Nazism is linked to ethnic beliefs. But the Serbs, like the Russians, what do they defend?

How do you think it will end?

I do not know. I have already talked about Ukraine. Russia, hard to say. But in recent weeks I have seen many Ukrainians and Russians, middle classes and intelligentsia, arriving in Montenegro, renting houses for a year. That country is losing much of the elite and that’s not good news.

I’ve lived in a war zone for thirty years. When I was in diplomacy, I remember we were discussing three types of problems: those of Europe, those of the global world, and those of war zones. Now there is only one: war. I have seen many wars, but this one excites me more than the others, because there is no adequate reaction from the West.