Serb leader comments on prospects of ‘sovereign state’

Republika Srpska will become a separate nation through peaceful means only, Milorad Dodik has said

Bosnia and Herzegovina has always been a foreign project with no chance of success and Republika Srpska (RS) will gain independence from the country, the president of the mainly Serbian-populated region, Milorad Dodik, has said.

“Republika Srpska is going to be a sovereign state and will achieve this peacefully. We don’t have a military plan, all our plans are not military, but peaceful. There will be peace on our side,” Dodik said in an interview with Serbian broadcaster RTS on Tuesday.

The decision to part ways with Bosnia and Herzegovina “will one day be made by the parliament of Republika Srpska,” he believes.

The president added that he sees nothing wrong about his desire for a “Greater Serbia” that would be “big and strong” and unite all the Serbs, who found themselves living in different countries after the break up of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s.

“I don't believe in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was created artificially and never had a chance to succeed. It was an experiment performed by foreigners so that they could train their inexperienced elites here,” Dodik said.

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There are no logical or historical reasons for the country to exist and “the only rational thing is to divide it,” he added.

Under the US-brokered Dayton Agreement of 1995 that put an end to a civil war, Bosnia and Herzegovina consists of the majority-Muslim Bosniak-Croat Federation and Republika Srpska. The two regions are almost similar in size, but the Bosniak-Croat Federation has a larger population. The country is ruled by a three-member presidency, made up of a Bosnian, a Serb and a Croat.

Dodik, who previously served a term in the tripartite presidency, was elected the leader of Republika Srpska in 2022.

The 64-year-old was sanctioned by the US last year for his “continued threats to the stability and territorial integrity” of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Last year, Dodik said that Republika Srpska had no objections to Bosnia and Herzegovina’s aspirations to join the EU, but stressed that it was not going to support the country’s membership in NATO. He has also backed Serbia’s territorial integrity, saying that his republic will not recognize the independence of the breakaway region of Kosovo.

READ MORE: Serb leader ‘proud’ of relations with Russia

In his interview with RT in February, Dodik pointed out that he was “proud” of the relations between Republika Srpska and Russia. The EU and the US are pressuring Bosnia and Herzegovina to join Western sanctions against Moscow, but that would not happen, he said.