Political unrest, quarrels and accusations have not stopped in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the last year. Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik has provoked a barrage of Western criticism of his decisions, for his opposition to co-operation and close ties to Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
As a result, warnings have long been heard that Bosnia is “on the verge of partition” and that Serbs are the ones threatening the fragile peace, influenced by ethnic nationalism and the false history of the 21st century. In this regard, the prestigious American media “The New York Times” brings a story through which it has tried to present the situation in BiH, among other things referring to Dodik’s ties with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and Putin, reports Telegrafi.
One of the most interesting parts of the story is how President Aleksandar Vucic has supported the claim that Serbs were unjustly mistreated as aggressors in the Bosnian war, describing Slobodan Milosevic – convicted in The Hague for crimes against humanity – as a “great Serbian leader ”and expressed regret that Serbia could not further expand throughout the Balkans.
“Vucic, who was elected for a second term as president in April, is one of the few European leaders who maintains close ties with Vladimir Putin, a relationship strengthened by their common Orthodox Christian faith and their nationalist point of view”, writes NYT. “They also share a support in the narrative of victimization. “Putin has called the dissolution of the Soviet Union ‘a major geopolitical catastrophe of the century’, citing ‘a series of existential threats – the Nazis, NATO, corrupt Western values’ – to justify Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”
And, same as Vucic, points out The New York Times article, he has pursued a strategy of denial, blaming the Ukrainian government, for example for the Russian atrocities in Ukraine or claiming that they were staged by anti-Russian figures. “Putin and Vucic both rely on the belief that they rule over great peoples whose natural borders and heroic destinations have been plundered, whether by ‘Nazi’ Ukrainians, Bosnians or Kabbalahs led by America and Europe.” The American media recalls that in Bosnia things culminated last July, when Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik, in response to a new law banning genocide denial in Bosnia, severely restricted Serb participation in the Bosnian government for six months.
“Dodik is a solid ally of Vucic and Putin and his interests have become increasingly aligned with those of Russia, which aims to block Bosnia from moving towards membership in the European Union and NATO, and wants to strengthen the Serbian-Russian alliance. “There is a fear that the war in Ukraine could have a pervasive effect, with Putin working with Dodik to divide the fragile country.” In this context, last fall, Christian Schmidt, the international administrator responsible for overseeing the Dayton Accords, which ended the Bosnian war in 1995, submitted a report to the United Nations Security Council, in which he warned: “The prospects for further division and conflict are very real.”