Sunday, April 3, Aleksander Vucic was re-elected President of Serbia with about 60% of the vote, the same week on Friday, April 8, six Chinese Y-20 cargo planes delivered HS22 missiles to Belgrade.
On the other side of the border is Bosnia and Herzegovina, a state born of the Dayton Accords in 1995, led by a high representative of the United Nations with a collegiate presidency, a Catholic Croat, a Muslim Bosnian and an Orthodox Serb, Milorad Dodik, the president of the Republika Serbska, whose capital is Banja Luka, while the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina is Sarajevo.
Last Monday, April 11, Milorad Dodik and Zeljka Cvijanovic, another leader of the Republika Serbska, were sanctioned by British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, who said: “These two policies deliberately undermine the hard-won peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Encouraged by Putin, their irresponsible behavior threatens stability and security in the Western Balkans. With these severe sanctions, we show that the enemies of peace will be held to account .”
Isn’t this decision a new motive for Milorad Dodik to speed up a strong alliance with Aleksander Vucic, at the risk of destabilizing Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, and therefore the western Balkans? A question posed to Christian Makarian.
For Christian Makarian, the state of play between Sarajevo, Banja Luka and Belgrade is based on Serbia’s candidacy for the European Union. It is no mystery that the President of Serbia and the President of Republika serbska are close to Russian President Vladimir Putin and their people consider themselves allies of Russia, the latest popular protests in support of Russia in Belgrade prove it.
But Aleksander Vucic must keep a line close to the EU, given his application for membership. Thus he abounded in the direction of the majority, in the last vote of the United Nations against Russia, but he retains in his heart support for Russia, including in the midst of the war against Ukraine.
For the Serbian president, we can say that he has a lot of cards in his hand. Miroslav Dodik wants to emancipate himself from Bosnia-Herzegovina, first of all by having his own army. For Sarajevo, that is to say the Croatian and Bosnian parts of the country, it is out of the question. But the story does not end there and risks becoming a long continuum.
For the Russian ambassador, Russian support would come in favor of the Republika Serbska, if ever Bosnia-Herzegovia gave signs of joining NATO. Here things are said, and President Vucic has the European Union somewhere by the throat, his entry being accompanied by very many conditions. As for the Secretary General of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, Bosnia-Herzegovina would be Vladimir Putin’s next objective after Ukraine.
The question is not new, for a very long time, it has been considered in authorized circles that the implosion of Bosnia-Herzegovia is only a matter of hours. This state “manufactured” from scratch by the influence of American diplomacy, cannot reconcile the rapprochement of communities distant from each other by recent history.
The same goes for the balance of the region with the Republic of Kosovo, this Serbian province which wants to be a state and is not recognized by the whole of the international community, a republic with a sulphurous past. It is true that the construction of Bosnia and Herzegovina is illogical. Why form a state with three communities, Serb, Croat and Bosnian, when it would have been much simpler to leave the Croatian community and its territory in Croatia, the same for the Serb community?
For the time being, the risk of conflict does indeed exist, a conflict which would surely exceed the comprehension of the technocrats of Brussels where the influence, even the implication of Moscow and Ankara is not to be ignored, but to be taken seriously into account, as confirmed by Christian Makarian.