Bosnian war propaganda resurgence: the last hurrah
By Stephen Karganovic | Strategic Culture Foundation | November 26, 2025
Most were under the impression that the war in Bosnia was behind us. The conflict in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s was characterised by the use of the crudest kind of propaganda, but it was undoubtedly in the Bosnian theatre that the crassness was the most pronounced.
It turns out however that for those who had politically benefitted from that war, or who think that they might still benefit a little more with an improvised replay of the propaganda techniques that were successful thirty years ago, the war in Bosnia remains the gift that keeps on giving.
Evidence of that is the intense media barrage, reminiscent of the 1990s, about alleged “Safari tourism” in the hills overlooking besieged Sarajevo. The story goes that wealthy psychopaths from Italy and other Western countries were paying enormous fees, running up to 100,000 euros in today’s money, eagerly collected by the Bosnian Serbs who held the hillside positions, for permission to shoot and kill defenceless civilians in the besieged city below.
The macabre “spirit cooking” dinners organised for the perverse pleasure and entertainment of the crème de la crème of Western elite circles, not to mention numerous other similar examples of depravity, make the Sarajevo allegation seem plausible, in principle at least. There are no moral factors on the side of this scenario’s Western perpetrators that would have prevented it from happening, assuming that the conditions were propitious.
That having been said, agreement that something could have happened is not an automatic confirmation that it actually did. Evidence is still needed to bridge the gap between a theoretical possibility and a demonstrated fact. For purveyors of propaganda, however, bridging that gap is not a major concern because their craft operates on emotional manipulation, not empirical proof. Their task is accomplished once they have successfully embedded in the public’s mind the subconscious impression they desired to implant there.
How does the Sarajevo “safari tourism” allegation stack up when examined with a reasonable degree of scepticism and the application of rigorous standards of proof? Like most propaganda constructions, it falls apart.
The first thing one notices that calls for extreme caution is that the alleged events occurred in the mid-1990s but are being brought to light and, it is claimed, investigated by the Milan Public Prosecutor’s Office only now, in 2025, more than thirty years later. The Bosnian war ended after the signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement in December of 1995 and soon thereafter conditions were sufficiently normalised in Bosnia and Herzegovina. There were no serious impediments to conducting war crimes investigations and numerous agencies and institutions did precisely that. Shooting safaris where the targets were human beings would be a crime against humanity of extraordinary gravity. A reasonable explanation is required why no police or judicial organs investigated these heinous allegations soon after those events are said to have happened, whilst witnesses could still be found with relative ease and, just as importantly, forensic evidence might still have been intact. That first and most obvious question is not even asked, let alone answered by anyone.
The other key unasked (and therefore also unanswered) question is about the source for these belated allegations. It is a documentary film “Sarajevo Safari,” released in 2022. We now come to the interesting part. The film was financed by Hasan Čengić, one of the founders of the Democratic Action Party of Bosnia’s war-time President Alija Izetbegović. Mr. Čengić therefore is by no means an impartial source. During the war he was one of the principal funds and arms procurers for Izetbegović. The film’s producer is the Slovenian film director Franci Zajc who during the conflict created numerous documentaries which uniformly presented only the Serbian side in an unfavourable light. Zajc also happens to be one of the only two supposedly percipient witnesses of this safari tale. The other alleged witness is Mr. Čengić himself who, however, is unavailable for cross examination because he passed away in 2021.
Some would argue that Zajc is a shady witness because of his extravagant claims that during the conflict in Bosnia he was an agent of Western intelligence agencies but that nevertheless the Serbs allowed, and in some versions even invited, him to observe these morbid proceedings. Why the Serbs would allow a hostile witness like Zajc to observe them in such a compromising situation is unexplained. Be that as it may, these are the only two ocular witnesses of the Sarajevo “tourist safari” events known so far. One of them claims and the other, Čengić, almost certainly did have intelligence connections. These are the exclusive sources for a sensational story that is making headlines in the collective West media and has even attracted the attention of one of the frequent contributors to this portal.
Yet even these scant sources for an event of major significance, if it is authentic, are not in complete harmony about an important detail of their story. Zajc has claimed that wealthy foreigners paid huge amounts of money to the besieging Serbs to shoot civilians and that they were provided with sniper weapons for that purpose by their Serbian hosts. Čengić on the other hand claimed before his death that foreigners were paying trifling fees for the morbid privilege and brought their own weapons.
But there are more problems with this affair. It is said that the Milan Public Prosecutor’s Office is conducting an investigation. That may well be the case. But the important question that anyone with legal training will immediately ask is what is the statute of limitations for murder in Italy? It happens to be 21 years. That means that if the imputed crime was committed more than twenty-one years before apprehension, even if the perpetrator were to be identified and linked to the crime he could not be prosecuted. The alleged offences date back to the mid-1990s, which means that the Italian statute of limitations has expired and nobody any longer can be brought to court to answer charges of sniping at civilians from the hills that surround Sarajevo. If the Prosecutor in Milan is indeed investigating, would he not be wasting his time?
If the motive were purely judicial, he certainly would be. But if the motive is predominantly political, not necessarily so.
Furthermore, even if statutory obstacles could be overcome, for instance by reclassifying the offence as a crime against humanity for which there is no statute of limitations instead of treating it as a simple murder under Italian law, there would still be a problem. For a conviction to be achieved under either indictment, beyond the necessity of personally identifying the shooters, which is the sine qua non, to actually convict them they would have to be directly linked to a lethal outcome on the ground. For an indictment to be viable, victims would have to be identified as well, almost thirty years after the fact. Shooting with a sniper weapon is not a crime unless it results in someone’s death. For culpability to be established, a forensic investigation would have to be conducted to determine for each imputed victim the cause and manner of death, and bullets which struck the victims would have to be provably traced to the weapons that were in the hands of the perpetrators at the time of shooting, almost thirty years ago. Does that seem like a feasible undertaking for the Milan Prosecutor, no matter how competent he may be? That is doubtful.
The media frenzy that has erupted around allegations of war-time tourist safaris on civilians in Sarajevo recalls the worst propaganda excesses of that conflict. Their most notable feature was that critical questions were not being asked and that few and largely unverified facts were force-fitted into a Procrustean propaganda matrix. When subjected to close scrutiny most of these claims almost always are found to be uncorroborated and spurious.
That certainly seems to be the case with the Sarajevo Safari story, regardless of the fact that the collective West media are having a field day expanding on it in endless and strikingly imaginary detail.
The Safari story will soon die a natural death once it is concluded that its political purpose has been achieved. The purpose is not to convict anyone because given the complete unavailability of any evidence, even under the most rigged trial conditions that would be nearly impossible. It is, rather, to create a sinister impression that would further discredit the Serbian entity in Bosnia, the Republika Srpska, for colluding with depraved individuals and facilitating their heinous behaviour in return for money. The successful dissemination of such an impression will serve as an additional argument for the liquidation of Republika Srpska and will indirectly validate other heinous allegations made at the expense of the Serbian side during the Bosnian conflict. That explains the timing.
As for the Milan Prosecutor’s Office, it will quietly drop its investigation for some specious bureaucratic reason that no one will ever question. And there on the legal level the matter will end. There will be no facts, only emotionally charged impressions.
Republic of Srpska in crosshairs again
By Stephen Karganovic | Strategic Culture Foundation | August 20, 2025
The political siege of Russia’s tiny Balkan ally, the Republic of Srpska, an autonomous entity within Bosnia and Herzegovina, is gaining momentum. On Monday, 18 August 2025, two significant developments took place. The first is that the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina denied the appellate motion of Milorad Dodik to quash the decision of the Central Electoral Commission cancelling his Presidential mandate. That is the endpoint of the legal proceedings against Dodik on charges of disobeying the orders of Bosnia’s de facto colonial administrator, German bureaucrat Christian Schwarz. The other significant event was the resignation, on the same day, of Republic of Srpska’s Prime Minister, Radomir Višković. Višković was appointed by Dodik in 2018 and was considered a loyal aide to the President. The impact of his hasty departure, on exactly the same day that, by collective West reckoning, Dodik ceased to be President and became a private person, is yet to become fully visible. But the fact that he did not even wait for a “decent interval” (Kissinger’s famous words from another context) before abandoning ship cannot be regarded but as politically ominous.
For a proper understanding of the roots of the grave constitutional and political crisis affecting not just the Republic of Srpska but Bosnia and Herzegovina as a whole it would be worthwhile to briefly review the violations of fundamental international and domestic legal principles that had given it rise.
At the conclusion of the civil war in Bosnia, in late 1995, a peace agreement was hammered out in Dayton, Ohio, between the three Bosnian parties with the participation of the major Western powers and interested neighbouring countries. The agreement provided for a sovereign Bosnia and Herzegovina organised as a loose confederation of two constituent ethnically based entities, the Republic of Srpska and the Muslim-Croat Federation. The country had become a member of the UN in 1992 when it separated from Yugoslavia. That membership continued and served as an additional guarantee of its sovereign status as a subject of international law.
One of the provisions of the Dayton Agreement was that the UN Security Council would select and approve an international High Representative with a year-long mandate. That official would be authorised to “interpret” such sections of the Peace Agreement concerning the meaning and application of which the parties were unable to agree. The initially one-year mandate envisioned for the High Representative by inertia became extended indefinitely so that, after nearly thirty years of peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina, that office still exists.
In December of 1995, shortly after the signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement, a self-created entity called the Peace Implementation Council (PIC) was organised by 10 collective West countries and international bodies to “mobilise international support for the Agreement.” Russia originally was invited to be a member, though in its parlous political condition of the 1990s it was always outvoted by Western “partners,” but it has since withdrawn. Also by inertia, at its 1997 meeting in Bonn, Germany, PIC expanded the scope of its own activity vis-à-vis Bosnia to include proposing to the UN Security Council a suitable candidate for High Representative when that post would become vacant. But more importantly, acting motu propio it radically augmented the powers that the High Representative in Bosnia could exercise, to a level not contemplated in the Dayton Agreement. According to the “Bonn Powers” granted to him by PIC at the 1997 meeting, he would no longer be confined to “interpreting” the Dayton Agreement but would also be invested with unprecedentedly robust authority to annul and impose laws in Bosnia and Herzegovina and to dismiss and appoint public officials.
In the Wikipedia article on this subject, of unspecified authorship but written evidently by someone sympathetic to this method of governance, it is stated that “international control over Bosnia and Herzegovina is to last until the country is deemed politically and democratically stable and self-sustainable.” Who decides that is left conveniently unsaid, but the arrogant formulation constitutes a text-book definition of a colonial protectorate.
As a result of these manipulative rearrangements of the peace framework codified in the Dayton accords, acting by its arbitrary volition, PIC, a self-authorised group of countries, conferred on the Bosnian High Representative a drastic expansion of executive authority, which was without basis either in the Dayton Peace Agreement or in international law. Or in the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina, for that matter.
Article 3.3.6 of that Constitution prescribes that “general provisions of international law are an integral part of the legal order of Bosnia and Herzegovina.”
As cogently argued by Serbian constitutional law professor Milan Blagojević, the chief of the general precepts of international law is the principle of sovereign equality of member states of the United Nations, as enshrined in Article 2 of the Charter. That principle is the reason why Article 78 of the Charter prohibits the establishment of a trusteeship, or protectorate, over any member state of the United Nations.
As Prof. Blagojević further points out, that means that both the Charter of the United Nations and the Constitution of UN member state Bosnia and Herzegovina, which incorporates it by reference, prohibit anyone other than the competent organs of the member state to promulgate its laws or to interfere in any other way in the operation of its legal system.
But that is exactly what Christian Schmidt, the individual currently claiming to be the High Representative in Bosnia, has done, provoking the crisis in which the Republic of Srpska is engulfed. In 2023, he arbitrarily decreed that a new provision of his own making and without need for parliamentary approval should be inserted in Bosnia’s Criminal Code, making non-implementation of the High Representative’s orders a punishable criminal offence. Incidentally, not only are the “Bonn Powers” that Schmidt invoked in support of his invasive interference in Bosnia’s legal system questionable, but so is his own status as “High Representative.” Fearing a Russian veto, his nomination was not even submitted to the UN Security Council, so that the Council never exercised its prerogative of approving or rejecting it.
Noticing the flagrant violation of applicable international and domestic legal norms, shortly thereafter in 2023 the Parliament of the Republic of Srpska passed a law making decrees of the High Representative that trespassed his original authority under the Dayton Peace Agreement null and void and unenforceable on the Republic’s territory. That bold but perfectly reasonable law, adopted by a duly elected Parliament, gave great offence to the guardians of the “rules based order.” Acting in his capacity as President, and in defiant disregard for Schmidt’s explicit warning to desist, Milorad Dodik signed the law, giving it legal effect.
The prosecution case against Dodik in the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina stemmed from that act of boorish defiance of orders that clearly were of questionable provenance and even more doubtful legality. But as a result, Dodik was nevertheless arbitrarily deposed as President and is not allowed to run for public office in his country for the next six years.
The range of choices now before Dodik and, more importantly, the Republic of Srpska and the million Serbs who live there, is extremely limited. The Electoral Commission which, like all organs of Bosnia’s central government, answers to whoever has usurped the office of High Representative, will now have up to ninety days to call a snap election to fill the post of Republika Srpska President. As expounded in a previous article, under the current rules, and with Dodik’s forced departure from the political scene, it should not be difficult to “democratically” install a cooperative figure like Pashinyan in Armenia, who would be amenable to implementing collective West’s agenda. The key elements of that long-standing agenda are the lifting of Republika Srpska’s veto on Bosnia’s NATO membership and governmental centralisation for the convenience of the collective West overlords. In practice, the latter means divesting the entities of their autonomy and consequently of their capacity to cause obstruction.
Dodik has announced ambitious plans to counter these unfavourable developments. He intends first to call a referendum for Republika Srpska voters to declare whether or not they want him to continue to serve as President, followed by another referendum for Serbs to decide whether they wish to secede or remain in Bosnia and Herzegovina. But these manoeuvres and aspirations may be too little, too late. As the abrupt resignation of his Prime Minister presages, there may soon begin a stampede of other officials eager to distance themselves from Dodik, anxious for their sinecures and fearful of being prosecuted – like their erstwhile President – for disobedience. Once private citizen Dodik has been divested of effective control over his country’s administrative apparatus, threats of secession or referendums to demonstrate his people’s continued loyalty will ring hollow and are unlikely to impress, much less achieve, their purpose.
Countdown begins for the Republic of Srpska
By Stephen Karganovic | Strategic Culture Foundation | August 9, 2025
The chronic political crisis in the Republic of Srpska, one of two ethnically-based constituent entities of Bosnia and Herzegovina, has taken a grave turn for the worse. On 26 February, the illegitimate federal Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, acting under the thumb of the equally illegitimate international “High Representative,” who is actually the colonial governor in the supposedly sovereign country, issued a politically tainted verdict against Milorad Dodik, President of the Republic of Srpska. Dodik had been put on trial on the spurious charge of “defying” the edicts of the High Representative. To no one’s surprise, he was found guilty. The court sentenced him to one year’s imprisonment and banned him from holding public office for six years. Practically all avenues of appeal having now been exhausted, the Electoral Commission of Bosnia and Herzegovina wasted no time to meet on Wednesday 6 August and to officially annul Milorad Dodik’s Presidential mandate. The Commission now has ninety days to organise a snap election to fill the vacancy it had capriciously created in the post of President of the Republic of Srpska.
Milorad Dodik thus joins other European political figures, such as Marine Le Pen in France and Kalin Georgescu and Diana Sosoaka in Romania, who have been disqualified from participation in politics for professing banned opinions and advocating proscribed political positions. The pattern is exactly the same and it is being repeated. It no longer matters what their respective electorates prefer and for whom they wish to vote. The voters are denied the opportunity to express their preference if there is the slightest possibility that they might elect someone whose policies are incompatible with the objectives of the unelected and unaccountable globalist deep state cabal which, in the collective West and its dependencies, is the real government.
The farce of “democracy” and “rules based order” can be contemplated in microcosm in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where the sordid political drama which is the subject of this report is unfolding. Supposedly an independent country since the signing in 1995 of the Dayton agreement which ended the civil war, and featuring all the outward trappings of “Western democracy,” Bosnia and Herzegovina has in fact been ruled in neo-colonial fashion by a High Representative who is appointed by the “international community” and invested with dictatorial powers. Over the years, the scope of the High Representative’s authority has been increasing steadily and by design at the expense of the autonomous ethnic entities. Officials in that position promulgated and annulled laws, ousted democratically elected local officials who were deemed uncooperative, and arbitrarily imposed institutions they themselves invented, which are not contemplated either in the Bosnian Constitution or the Dayton Peace Agreement. The Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina which tried and convicted Milorad Dodik is a conspicuous example of such a constitutionally spurious institution which came into being ex nihilo by decree of a previous High Representative.
To make the irony complete, the credentials of Christian Schmidt, the individual currently claiming to be the High Representative, are as dubious as is the legal standing of the “court” which tried and convicted Dodik. Schmidt’s appointment was accomplished by a sleight of hand on the part of the collective West, never having been submitted for approval to the UN Security Council, as established procedure provides.
The “offence” imputed to Dodik is that he signed into law a measure enacted by the National Assembly providing that decrees issued by the arguably illegitimate High Representative would not be enforced on Republic of Srpska territory. Invoking his alleged powers as High Representative, Schmidt warned Dodik to refrain from doing that and preventively inserted in the Bosnia-Herzegovina criminal code a section which defines non- enforcement of High Representative’s decrees as a criminal offence. In the face of Dodik’s non-compliance, Schmidt ordered the public prosecutor’s office to seek Dodik’s indictment pursuant to the section of the criminal code he himself had created for precisely that purpose. So as matters presently stand, Milorad Dodik has been removed as President of the Republic of Srpska, the office to which he was legally elected by his constituents. That was achieved through a verdict delivered by a constitutionally illegal court acting on the basis of a rogue provision in the criminal code dictated without any legislative input by a foreign official illegitimately exercising a power that he does not have.
It is difficult to imagine, or to stage, a more colossal farce.
There are, of course, solid reasons why for a long time Dodik’s ouster has been insistently sought by the powers that be. His background is shady, like that of most Balkan politicians, but that certainly is not the real reason for their animosity. Initially, in the 1990s, he was in fact the West’s favourite in post-Dayton Bosnia, avidly promoted by Madeleine Albright of all people. The particulars of his road to Damascus conversion and subsequent meanderings certainly bear careful analysis, but the empirical net result of it is that by the time in 2006 that he became Prime Minister Dodik was on the outs with his original mentors. He had now become a forceful advocate of close relations with Russia and a determined opponent of Bosnia’s accession to NATO, an issue over which the Republic of Srpska wields veto power. He further infuriated his former mentors by steadfastly opposing the evisceration of the Dayton Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina and by resisting fiercely the erosion of Republic of Srpska’s autonomous status which is guaranteed by it.
It must be admitted that the collective West has now come within striking distance of achieving its goal to snuff out the Republic of Srpska. The Dodik removal operation seems now to have been brought to its conclusion, and in a way that observes the outward forms of legality, or so it would appear if one does not delve too deeply into the intricacies of the matter. In relatively short order, a snap Presidential election will take place in Republika Srpska. The collective West will concentrate its still formidable resources in that tiny but disproportionately significant point of the globe to ensure that the Republika Srpska Gorbachev is duly elected and can launch the process of its dismantlement and geostrategic reorientation of what is left of it. Mechanisms to accomplish that are already in place and a possible mass boycott of the discontented Serbian population is unlikely to affect anything. The electoral law currently in force does not require that a minimum number of eligible voters should take part for the election to be deemed valid. With reliable formulas of electoral engineering, helped along with copious quantities of cash, even in the event that on election day all patriotic Serbs should stay at home, the “right” candidate might receive only a handful of votes but his “victory” would nevertheless be easily assured. Prompt recognition of the bogus outcome by the “international community” will do the rest.
Like most Balkan politicians, Dodik has failed to prepare another figure of comparable stature who might succeed him and continue what was good in his policies. That failure will soon take its toll because none of the mediocrities and yes men surrounding him has the charisma and attributes that are necessary to prevail in the coming uphill battle to prevent Republika Srpska from falling lock, stock, and barrel into the hands of its enemies.
The failure to prepare however is not to be laid just at Dodik’s but also at Russia’s door. As in neighbouring Serbia and many other places the policy of all eggs in one basket is once again proving to be erroneous and detrimental to Russia’s interests. Non-interference in other countries’ affairs and working with the established authorities is a fine principle, but only in its dogmatically overzealous and ultimately counter-productive application would that exclude the prudent policy of cultivating capable individuals and amicable political forces. They should be there to act when necessary as an effective counterbalance to the ruthless interference that Russia’s unyielding adversaries incessantly and everywhere engage in.
Bosnian Serb leader stripped of presidential mandate, vows to never surrender
Remix News – August 7, 2025
Last Friday, the Bosnian Court of Appeal upheld the initial verdict against the separatist Milorad Dodik, sentencing the Bosnian Serb, who is president of the Republika Srpska, to one year in prison and banning him from holding public office for six years.
The electoral commission subsequently decided to revoke his presidential mandate, writes Magyar Nemzet, and Dodik has 90 days to appeal the decision.
As Remix News has previously reported, Dodik was jailed for going against orders of an international peace-keeping envoy and suspending rulings by the country’s constitutional court.
Dodik has systematically been pulling out of the federal institutions and legal frameworks of Bosnia and Herzegovina, implementing bans on its judiciary and intelligence agency.
The Bosnian Federal Prosecutor’s Office indicted Dodik in August 2023 under a section of the Criminal Code that provides for a prison sentence of six months to five years and a ban from office for up to ten years for an official who fails to comply with, implement, or obstruct the decisions of the High Representative of the international community.
In response to this most recent ruling, Dodik said: “I am not going anywhere, there’s no surrender,” announcing a referendum to determine whether Bosnian Serbs agree with the electoral commission’s decision and whether they should accept the disregard for the constitution of the Republika Srpska.
Dodik says he will continue his fight in the name of the people he represents, “The will of the people will prevail, no one can break the political will of a people. I will listen to the people, because I received my mandate from the people.”
He noted that, according to the law, the mandate of the Bosnian Serb president only ends with recall or resignation; the electoral commission can only grant or confirm this mandate, it has no right to revoke it.
Dodik has taken several steps in recent months to promote the independence of Republika Srpska. In mid-March, he submitted a draft of the new constitution for the region, as well as a law on the protection of the constitutional order of Republika Srpska.
For nearly three decades, the politician has been calling for Republika Srpska to become independent and believes that Bosnia and Herzegovina is unfit to function as a state. Dodik is known for his ambitions for closer ties to both Russia and Serbia.
Hungary has been a close friend to Dodik, calling for an “end to the witch hunt” against him and also previously pushing for fast-track EU accession of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Dodik has publicly thanked Hungary for €100 million sent to Republika Srpska for the development of agriculture as well.
Western ‘interventionism’ has turned Bosnia and Herzegovina into a ‘failed state’ – Bosnian Serb leader
RT | April 2, 2025
Western interference has turned Bosnia and Herzegovina into a “failed state,” and the country now needs Russia’s help to resolve the crisis, Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik has told RT. Dodik, the president of Republika Srpska – the Serb-majority autonomous region within Bosnia and Herzegovina – arrived in Russia on Monday for talks with President Vladimir Putin.
Bosnia and Herzegovina was created under the 1995 US-brokered Dayton Peace Agreement, which ended the civil war in the former Yugoslavia. It formed a state comprised of the Bosniak-Croat Federation and Republika Srpska, with a tripartite presidency and an international overseer – the Office of the High Representative (OHR), now held by Christian Schmidt, a former German lawmaker appointed in 2021.
Dodik has long rejected the OHR’s authority, accusing it of overreach and undermining Republika Srpska’s autonomy. He was sentenced in February to a year in prison and a six-year political ban for defying the OHR. Sarajevo issued a national arrest warrant for him and is reportedly seeking Interpol warrants.
In an interview with RT on Tuesday, Dodik said the Dayton agreement, which formed his country, is no longer upheld, and that he has asked the Russian president, who he met with earlier that day, to assist him in bringing the situation to the attention of the UN Security Council (UNSC).
“[Putin] knows of the existence of foreigners that are making up laws and decisions in our country, that there are courts which abide by these decisions… and that this is not in the spirit of Dayton,” Dodik said. He added that as a permanent UNSC member and Dayton signatory, Russia is in a position to effect change.
“We talked about the need to engage in the monitoring of the UNSC. Russia is the only one from which we can expect to have an objective approach… to end international interventionism which degraded Bosnia and Herzegovina and made it into a failed state,” he added.
Commenting on the Interpol warrants, Dodik said, “we’ll see how it goes,” adding that he already has the backing of Serbia, Hungary, and now Russia. He went on to call the charges “a political failure” by Sarajevo and the OHR.
“I think they would like to see me dead, not just in prison. They can’t get the Bosnia they want, in which there is no Republika Srpska, if Milorad Dodik remains president,” he said, adding that critics will try to demonize him for meeting with Putin.
Dodik has opposed Bosnia’s NATO membership and called for closer ties with Russia. He previously suggested that Bosnia would be better off in BRICS and has pledged continued cooperation with Moscow despite Western pressure.
Russia, which does not recognize Schmidt’s legitimacy due to the lack of UNSC approval, has denounced Dodik’s conviction as “political” and based on “pseudo-law” imposed by the OHR.
After meeting with Putin, Dodik said on X that he will return to Republika Srpska on Saturday to meet with regional leaders, adding that Russia has agreed to advocate for an end to the work of international bodies in Bosnia, including the OHR.
Serbia between political destabilization and a new military front in the Balkans
By Lorenzo Maria Pacini | Strategic Culture Foundation | March 24, 2025
Bosnia’s dysfunctional political system, the result of the 1995 Dayton Accords that divided the country into two entities jointly governed by Serbs, Croats (a Catholic majority) and Muslims, with a rotating presidency under international supervision, is inexorably collapsing. In Serbia, protests against corruption and for regime change have been going on for months, and last weekend’s protests were the most impressive to date. Images of the human tide that invaded the streets of Belgrade went around the world in no time at all, but also caused a lot of confusion about the events.
In Bosnia, recent tensions have arisen from the issuance of arrest warrants by the central authorities against the president of the Republika Srpska Milorad Dodik, his prime minister and the president of the parliament. The measures stem from their refusal to comply with the directives of the “high representative” Christian Schmidt, whose appointment in 2021 by the Biden administration was not approved by the UN Security Council. Consequently, neither Dodik nor Russia recognize his authority, believing that his requests aim to reduce the autonomy of the Republika Srpska in order to favor the centralization of the Bosnian state for the political advantage of the Islamic component.
One of Schmidt’s main objectives would be to eliminate the Republika Srpska’s veto on Bosnia’s entry into NATO, which would explain the international pressure on Dodik and the attempt to remove him. Despite the differences between the Biden and Trump administrations, the latter does not seem to actively oppose this strategy. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has accused Dodik of undermining the stability of Bosnia and Herzegovina, stating that the country should not fragment; simultaneously, Dorothy Shea, the US chargé d’affaires at the UN, has expressed support for EUFOR (European Union Force in Bosnia and Herzegovina), hinting at the possibility of intervention against the leadership of Republika Srpska. Nothing new from the western Atlantic front.
In response to these unpleasant provocations, Dodik invited Rubio to a dialogue to present the Serbian point of view and made an interesting proposal: to grant American companies exclusive rights to extract rare earth minerals from the Republika Srpska, a deal with an estimated value of 100 billion dollars, which could attract the attention of the Potus, and emphasized that US policy in the Balkans is still influenced by the so-called Deep State, in particular by elements of the American embassy in Bosnia, historically hostile to Trump.
British involvement in Bosnian tensions cannot be ruled out, considering that the Russian Foreign Secret Service, the SVR, recently denounced the UK’s role in sabotaging Trump’s policy of rapprochement with Russia, almost coinciding with the accusation that Nikolai Patrushev, Putin’s advisor, made towards London, saying that he tried to destabilize the Baltic countries, hinting that he could act in a similar way in the Balkans.
Things are not much better in Serbia
The situation in Serbia is equally delicate. The country has been shaken by protests, which began after a train station incident in Novi Sad last November, fueled by discontent over corruption, with demands for accountability that could lead to a change of government. However, the protest movement is heterogeneous, including both Western-linked groups and Serbian nationalists.
Globalist liberals accuse President Aleksandr Vucic of being too pro-Russian for not having imposed sanctions on Moscow, while Serbian patriots consider him excessively pro-Western for his ambiguous positions on Kosovo, Russia and Ukraine. Vucic, for his part, claims that the protests against him are part of a Western strategy to destabilize him, and Russia itself has allegedly confirmed a supposed plot for a coup against him.
Despite accusations of Western interference, Vucic has maintained cooperation with NATO, signing a “Partnership for Peace” agreement in 2015 allowing the Alliance to transit through Serbia and in August 2024, while facing large-scale protests, he signed a three billion dollar deal with France for the supply of warplanes, raising doubts about the West’s real hostility towards him. Throughout all this, the United States continues to exert pressure on him through various channels.
The tensions in Bosnia and Serbia are not unrelated: the Western objective seems to be for Bosnia to join NATO and for Russian influence in the Balkans to be reduced. If Trump does not oppose the current policy or does not accept Dodik’s offer on rare earths, the risk of an escalation in Bosnia could increase.
Geopolitically speaking, the American doctrine of division and control continues to prevail in the Balkans, seeking to exclude any possible reunification of Bosnia and Serbia.
The only chance for the Serbs to improve their position will be close coordination between Serbia, the Republika Srpska and, if possible, Russia, to counter Western pressure and obtain the best possible result.
NATO takes advantage of the situation
Throughout all this, NATO doesn’t miss the opportunity to take advantage of the situation. The Secretary General, Mark Rutte, has declared that the actions of the Republika Srpska are unacceptable and that the United States will not offer any support to Dodik, a position also reiterated by the American Embassy in Bosnia.
EUFOR has announced that it will reinforce its contingent to deal with the growing tensions, sending reinforcements by land through the Svilaj and Bijaca passes and by air to Sarajevo airport. An excellent excuse to deploy a good number of soldiers to guard what increasingly seems to be a color revolution involving two countries.
Despite growing international pressure, the Republika Srpska can count not only on the support of Moscow and Belgrade, but also on the diplomatic support of Budapest and Bratislava, who have expressed their support for a peaceful resolution of the situation, avoiding participating in veiled military threats.
On March 10, the Chief of Staff of the Serbian Armed Forces, Milan Mojsilović, met his Hungarian counterpart, Gábor Böröndi, in Belgrade and they discussed regional and global security, as well as joint military activities aimed at strengthening stability in the area. The intensity of bilateral military cooperation was reaffirmed, with the intention of expanding it further. Particular attention was paid to joint operations between the land and air components of the two armies, as well as to the contribution of Hungarian forces to the international security mission in Kosovo and Metohija.
It seems clear that the only way for NATO to put an end to Serbian-Bosnian sovereignty is to trigger a new internal conflict, using local armed groups along the lines of what happened in Syria, or a sort of Maidan based on the 2014 Ukrainian model.
The military risk fueled by KFOR
The Kosovo Force (KFOR) is an international mission led by NATO, established in 1999 with the aim of ensuring security and stability in Kosovo, in accordance with United Nations Security Council Resolution 1244.
At the beginning of the operation, it had over 50,000 soldiers from 20 NATO member countries and partner nations. Over time, the presence has been reduced. As of March 2022, KFOR consisted of 3,770 soldiers from 28 contributing countries.
To give an idea of the type of deployment, consider that there are:
– Regional Command West (RC-W): unit based at “Villaggio Italia” near the city of Pec/Peja, currently consisting of the 62nd “Sicilia” Infantry Regiment of the “Aosta” Brigade. RC-W also includes military personnel from Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, North Macedonia, Poland, Turkey, Austria, Moldova and Switzerland.
Multinational Specialized Unit (MSU): located in Pristina and commanded by Colonel Massimo Rosati of the Carabinieri, this highly specialized unit of the Carabinieri has been present in Kosovo since the beginning of the mission in 1999. The regiment has been employed mainly in the northern part of the country, characterized by a strong ethnic Serbian population, particularly in the city of Mitrovica.
The main operational activities of KFOR include:
– Patrolling and maintaining a presence in Kosovo through regular patrols;
The activity of the Liaison Monitoring Teams (LMT), which have the task of ensuring continuous contact with the local population, government institutions, national and international organizations, political parties and representatives of the different ethnic groups and religions present in the territory. The objective is to acquire information useful to the KFOR command for the carrying out of the mission;
– Support for local institutions, in an attempt not to give in to Serbia’s demands.
These are forces that are deployed and ready to intervene. This is a detail that must be taken into consideration. NATO is not neglecting the strategic importance of that key area of the Balkans.
With their backs to the wall, the governments of Serbia and Republika Srpska don’t have many options: they will soon have to face difficult choices, which could radically change the face of the Balkans.
In short, we are once again at risk of seeing the Balkans explode, as happened just over 100 years ago. Who will be responsible for the explosion this time?
Orban blasts conviction of Bosnian Serb leader
RT | February 26, 2025
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has condemned the conviction of Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik by a court in Sarajevo, describing it as a “political witch hunt” and a misuse of the legal system against a democratically elected official. Such moves are detrimental to the stability of the Western Balkans, he warned.
A Bosnian court sentenced Dodik, the president of Republika Srpska, to one year in prison on Wednesday for obstructing decisions made by Bosnia’s constitutional court and defying the authority of international envoy Christian Schmidt, who oversees the implementation of the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement that concluded the Bosnian war. The court also barred Dodik from holding political office for six years.
“The political witch hunt against President @MiloradDodik is a sad example of the weaponization of the legal system aimed at a democratically elected leader,” Orban wrote on X in response to the court’s ruling.
“If we want to safeguard stability in the Western Balkans, this is not the way forward!”
Dodik did not attend the sentencing but addressed supporters in Banja Luka afterward, denouncing the ruling as politically motivated and pledging to implement “radical measures.” He warned that the conviction could deal a “death blow to Bosnia and Herzegovina” and suggested the possibility of Republika Srpska’s secession.
In a post on his official X account, Dodik announced plans for the Republika Srpska National Assembly to reject the court’s decision and prohibit the enforcement of any rulings from Bosnia’s state judiciary within its territory. Republika Srpska would obstruct the operations of Bosnia’s central government and police within its jurisdiction, he declared.
Dodik has two weeks to appeal the verdict. Legal experts indicate that the sentence will become final once the appeals process is exhausted.
Following the verdict, Dodik communicated with Orban and Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, expressing gratitude for their support. Vucic has convened an emergency meeting of Serbia’s National Security Council to discuss the implications of Dodik’s sentence and is expected to visit Republika Srpska within the next 24 hours.
Dodik is known for his opposition to NATO and has resisted Bosnia’s accession to the US-led military bloc. He has also opposed Western sanctions against Russia related to the Ukraine conflict.
Biden has pledged that ‘America is back.’ But as peace shatters in the Balkans, does that mean yet more US misadventures?

KFOR forces patrol near the border crossing between Kosovo and Serbia in Jarinje, Kosovo, October 2, 2021. © REUTERS / Laura Hasani; Inset © REUTERS / Evelyn Hockstein
By Julian Fisher | RT | October 24, 2021
With warnings that fresh tensions between Serbia and Kosovo could unravel the decades-old peace deal that put an end to bloody fighting in the Balkans after the breakup of Yugoslavia, the US is increasingly split on what to do.
Earlier this month, the SOHO forum in New York City hosted a debate between Scott Horton, long-time libertarian and anti-war radio host, and Bill Kristol, the neoconservative thinker and one of the ideological architects of America’s post-9/11 world order. The subject of the debate was US interventionism, its merits and historical record.
Predictably, Kristol offered vague niceties that attempt to recast America’s legacy as that of the “benevolent global hegemony”, a term which he himself coined in 1996 when describing the country’s role in the world. Reflecting on the wars in Iraq, Kristol simultaneously said that America “didn’t push democracy enough” and also “may have been too ambitious.” In short, he acknowledged mistakes were made, which is an admission that would have been unthinkable only a few years ago, and yet still falls short of accountability.
However, whereas American actions in the Middle East leave a lot to be desired for Kristol, he insists that the US intervention in the Yugoslav Wars during the 1990s was a success. As he put it, the Balkans was “one case of a war that was worth it and that I think had pretty good consequences.” As if on cue, the Balkan pot is beginning to boil once again.
An unresolved conflict
Kosovo has been a potential tinderbox in Southern Europe ever since the end of the war of 1998/1999. A recent row with Serbia, from which it unilaterally declared independence, has led to a new escalation in tensions.
Beginning in September 2021, Serbs living in Kosovo launched protests against authorities hassling travelers who enter the territory with Serbian-issued license plates, prompting a mobilization of armed Kosovo police forces, roadblocks, and traffic jams near the border. Two vehicle registration offices were vandalized.
The EU mediated a temporary fix in September that involves covering up national insignia on license plates with stickers, until a special working group in Brussels determines a more permanent solution sometime within the next six months. Whether this will be sufficient in bringing about immediate calm remains to be seen, however. Since then, further clashes have erupted between police and protesters near Mitrovica.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry has condemned the use of violence by Kosovo police against ethnic Serbs. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic in mid-October, calling for talks between Pristina and Belgrade and a diplomatic solution to be respected by all sides.
As the situation heated up, NATO quickly ramped up patrols throughout Kosovo, including the North. “KFOR [Kosovo Force] will maintain a temporary robust and agile presence in the area,” the US-led military bloc said in an official statement earlier this month, intended to support the implementation of the EU-brokered solution. Last week, Kosovo’s minister of defense, Armend Mehaj, flew to Washington to meet with Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Dr. Colin Kahl at the Pentagon. The subject of the discussions was “bilateral security cooperation priorities”.
These moves are only the latest instance of US-led posturing in Kosovo. It was with American support that Kosovo launched its campaign for international recognition in 2008. Many major countries, representing most of the world’s population — including Russia, China, and India — have not recognized it as a sovereign state. Kosovo’s persistent claim to independence is what makes an issue as seemingly benign as license plates a question of war and peace.
In the background is still the 1999 Kosovo War, which was the site of NATO’s infamous bombing campaign against Serbia that led to the deaths of at least 489 civilians, according to Human Rights Watch. In April of 1999, NATO deliberately targeted Serbia’s Radio Television station, killing 16 civilians, according to Amnesty International. At one point, the US “mistakenly” bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, killing three and wounding some 20 more, in what turned out to be the only target picked by the CIA over the course of the war.
To this day, the US maintains a military base, Camp Bondsteel, near Urosevac, Kosovo, as part of the international Kosovo Force (KFOR).
Two states in one
To the west, Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) has also reappeared in international news coverage. Against the backdrop of the EU’s Western Balkan Summit in early October, the Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik said last week that the parliament of the Serb Republic, one of two entities that together make up BiH, would soon vote to undo some of BiH’s state institutions. He included the military, the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council (HJPC) and the tax administration. These and others were established after the signing of the 1995 Dayton Peace accords and are not enshrined in the constitution.
Dodik wants an independent Serb Republic without compromising the territorial integrity of BiH, and he claims he has the support of seven EU member states, though he has not said which ones.
The genesis of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s recent headache is an amendment to the Criminal Code that makes various forms of inflammatory speech a punishable offense. The law was enacted in July of this year by the Office of the High Representative, an international “viceroy” with the power to impose binding decisions and remove public officials.
Russia has maintained that this appointed position is outdated, with a statement from the Foreign Ministry saying it was high time to “scale down the institute of foreign oversight over Bosnia-Herzegovina, which only creates problems and undermines peace and stability in that country.” Moscow also remains critical of attempts to integrate the country into NATO, insisting there is no consensus among the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina when it comes to joining the US-led bloc.
Playing to a different tune, already last month Washington tried to reprimand Dodik for his “secessionist rhetoric”. In a meeting just a few weeks ago, US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Gabriel Escobar warned of “nothing but isolation and economic despair” for the people of the Serb Republic. According to a transcript that Dodik shared with the press, he told Escobar that he doesn’t “give a damn about sanctions,” adding, “I’ve known that before. If you want to talk to me, don’t threaten me.”
In the US, various Balkan-American organizations have released a joint statement calling on Congress and the Biden administration “to immediately initiate steps to rebuff the attempts by the government of Serbia to unravel the region’s peace and security”. Citing both aforementioned developments in Kosovo and the Serb Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the statement demands a reinvigoration of “NATO enlargement as a priority for the region.” It suggests that what’s at stake in the Balkans is America’s legacy: “America invested too much of its own resources into this region to allow revanchist actors to decimate nearly a quarter century of progress.”
However, what does America investing its resources actually look like? In early 1992, before the war that scarred Bosnia and Herzegovina, all parties involved had already come to an agreement, the Carrington–Cutileiro plan, to divide Bosnia and Herzegovina into cantons along Serb, Croat, and Bosniak lines.
At the last minute, however, the then-US ambassador to Yugoslavia, Warren Zimmermann, met with the leader of the Bosniak majority, Alija Izetbegovic, in Sarajevo, reportedly promising him full recognition of a single Bosnia and Herzegovina. Izetbegovic promptly withdrew his signature from the partition agreement, and shortly thereafter the US and its European allies recognized Izetbegovic’s state. War ensued a month later, in April 1992. The US eventually worked its way back to new partition negotiations that echoed the talks held prior.
As the New York Times reported in 1993, “tens of thousands of deaths later, the United States is urging the leaders of the three Bosnian factions to accept a partition agreement similar to the one Washington opposed in 1992.”
Zimmermann is quoted as saying at the time that “Our hope was the Serbs would hold off if it was clear Bosnia had the recognition of Western countries. It turned out we were wrong.”
Returning to the Horton-Kristol debate from earlier, Horton cited America’s underhanded opposition to the Carrington-Cutileiro plan, and the devastating consequences, as a case in point of US interventions impeding, rather than promoting, peace and stability.
President Joe Biden declared at the start of his administration that “America is back.” Taking a look at the history of US interventions, this could spell trouble for the Balkans.
Julian Fisher is a policy analyst at the Russian Public Affairs Committee (Ru-PAC). He writes about Russia-U.S. relations, American foreign policy, and national security
The American Aggression Enablement Act and the US’ Eurasian Thrust (I)
By Andrew KORYBKO | Oriental Review | August 1, 2014
Congressional Hawks have been peddling the idea of a “Russian Aggression Prevention Act” since the beginning of May, but it has only been during the recent media-inspired hysteria that it began to gain traction. If passed into law, it would amount to a sweeping NATO offensive across all of Russia’s former soviet western periphery and would be the first official act of the ‘New Cold War’. Much has been written about the overall thematic consequences for US-Russian relations by Paul Craig Roberts and Patrick Buchanan illustrating how the US plans to use the legislation to subvert the Russian government from within via its support for ‘NGOs’ (and the prioritized ‘refugee’ status for journalists, ‘dissidents’, and various activists that is included in the document). What has not been explored, however, are some of the finer, yet no less important, aspects of the Act’s implementation. Whether it be NATO expansion into the Balkans or the destabilization of the Caucasus, bill S. 2277 more accurately could be described as the American Aggression Enablement Act (AAEA), as it represents a surge of US offensive military capability against Russian interests in its western flank.
Part I: The NATO Tumor Grows
The AAEA represents the cancerous growth of NATO throughout all of its targeted territories. Some of its most important details are that the EU and NATO are working hand-in-hand, NATO aims to swallow the Balkans, and the Missile Defense Shield (MDS) is to proceed at full speed ahead, with all of the resultant consequences thereof.
Good Cop, Bad Cop:
Although not explicitly stated in the AAEA itself, if one steps back and examines the overall context of the document, it is obvious that the EU and NATO have been working in lockstep to advance each other’s goals. In fact, an overall pattern can be ascertained:
(1) The EU makes some form of outreach to the targeted state(s) (e.g. The Eastern Partnership)
(2) Economic links between the EU and the target are nominally institutionalized (e.g. an EU Association Agreement)
(3) Shadow NATO (via major non-NATO ally status) moves in to defend the economic integration process
The EU presents the friendly, ‘humanitarian’ face to disarm the targeted state’s population while Shadow NATO inconspicuously attempts to absorb the country. This is the tried-and-tested technique of ‘good cop, bad cop’.
The Balkans or Bust:
The US is aggressively promoting its Armed Forces and NATO’s expansion into the Balkans as part of the AAEA. It stipulates that Obama must increase military cooperation with Bosnia, Montenegro, Kosovo, Macedonia, and Serbia, besides Azerbaijan and prescribed major non-NATO allies Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova. Although it is unlikely that Serbia will be integrated into the fold (it is a strong Russian ally and vividly remembers the bloody bombings of 1999), the move still represents a major expansion of US military influence in Europe. One must keep in mind that the formerly forgotten-about Balkans are now at the forefront of this ‘New Cold War’, with the US and some European actors trying to sabotage Russia’s South Stream gas project which, ironically, certain EU members had agreed to in the first place. Bosnia, Montenegro, Kosovo, and Macedonia are all entities abutting Serbia, which is planned to be one of the hubs of South Stream, so their inclusion into the enhanced NATO security framework suggested by the AAEA can be seen as surrounding Serbia prior to destabilizing it once more. In the context of bitter energy geopolitics, the US’ seemingly unexpected push into the Balkans makes absolute sense.
Missile Defense and NATO’s Northern Expansion:
Included in the AAEA is the directive to accelerate the rollout of the Missile Defense Shield (MDS). This was already envisioned to have land, sea, and space components per the phased adaptive approach framework. What makes the AAEA different, however, is that it wants to ‘poke Russia in the eyes’ and go forward with something that Moscow has already stated would certainly be a red line. Russia holds this stance because it believes that a MDS would neutralize its nuclear second-strike capability, thereby giving the US a monopoly on carrying out a nuclear first strike and shattering the mutual assured destruction concept that kept the peace between the two nuclear titans for decades.
Russia’s response thus far has been to deploy Iskander missiles to the Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad. One of the dual purposes of the US’ MDS is to goad Russia into taking more such defensive actions that could then be propagandized as ‘offensive’, thereby exaggerating ‘the Russian threat’ and contributing to fear mongering among the Swedish and Finnish citizenry. The end result is to push these countries deeper into the NATO apparatus. Finland has already said that it could hold a referendum on joining as early as April 2015 after the next round of parliamentary elections, with its Defense Minister already actively lobbying for this to happen. Sweden, on the other hand, already engages in such close cooperation with NATO that it’s already a shadow member in its own right, and Foreign Minister Carl Bildt is one of the most prominent Russophobic policy makers on the continent. Because of a joint agreement on military security, Finland can only join NATO together with Sweden, meaning that if any move is made, it would likely be a ‘double whammy’ to get the two states in at once. It goes without saying that if Russia would not allow NATO to be deployed in Georgia or Ukraine, it most definitely would not allow it to be deployed along the Russo-Finnish border, further increasing the chances of yet another crisis in NATO-Russian relations sometime down the line.
To be continued… Part II


