Alexander Borodai: Simultaneous aggravation in Bosnia, Kosovo and Donbass is not a coincidence
The almost synchronous escalation around Donbass, as well as Kosovo and Republika Srpska in Bosnia, is by no means a coincidence. Serbia is the westernmost outpost of the Russian world.
Deputy of the State Duma of the Russian Federation Alexander Borodai, head of the Union of Donbass Volunteers, told the PolitNavigator correspondent about this and much more.
"PolitNavigator": I know that you went through a number of military conflicts - of course, Donbass, Transnistria. Have you ever been to the Balkans in the 90s?
To be honest, I did not fight in Bosnia. And, in general, he did not participate in those events on the territory of the former Yugoslavia. Unlike my comrades in Transnistria. For example, Valera Bykova. Some died there. But I didn't go there. I am a participant in the Transnistrian war, two Chechen wars, I worked well in Central Asia during the period of conflict situations there, respectively, then there was a war in Donbass. But I visited Serbia regularly and repeatedly. And of course I have great human sympathy for the Serbian people. Like brothers.
Surprisingly, the aggravation in the north of Kosovo and Bosnia coincided with the aggravation in the Donbass. In your opinion, is this related or a coincidence?
I'm not sure if this is an accident. There is a policy of the West towards the Slavs and what is called the Russian world. And this policy is the same everywhere and always. It consists of two main components: provocations and sanctions.
The situation with the unrecognized republics, even before Donbass, was fully manifested in the post-Yugoslav space with the Serbian republics - the Republic of Serbian Krajina and the Republika Srpska. Can we say that the West has tested the situation there on how to deal with the peoples that it considers among its geopolitical opponents?
Of course we can. And, by the way, we can draw much larger historical analogies. Because the West is always trying to divide and dismember what is called not even the Russian world, but the Slavic world. If, for example, we remember the history of the Middle Ages, we will also remember that the Orthodox, and I emphasize, the Slavs, had several centers of unification. And the Polish-Lithuanian state was largely Orthodox, and in addition to Muscovite Rus', it was one of the centers of all-Russian, if you like, unity. And what did it come to? Moreover, thanks to the enormous efforts and completely wild organizational and financial investments of the Vatican, the Polish-Lithuanian state was transformed into the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which, thanks to enhanced ideological processing, turned into enemies of the Moscow state, the resurgent Russian World. It has turned into an eternal outpost of the West in an aggressive war against Russia, although the Poles are actually Slavs by blood. Absolutely. And the most striking manifestation of this is the behavior of the Polish interventionists during the Great Troubles with the capture of Moscow. Recently, in fact, we celebrated National Unity Day, and let me remind you that this is not just some kind of holiday, but the date of the liberation of Moscow, our capital, from Polish invaders.
Now the West is also moving to the East. Drang nach Osten continues. Only in the role of Poland, that medieval Poland, are they trying to make the so-called independent Ukraine such a weapon against the Russian Federation, as the heir of Rus', the Russian Empire, and to some extent the Soviet Union. And, accordingly, there is also a powerful ideological indoctrination of the population, in order to explain to people that they are not Slavs at all, that they are not part of the Russian ethnic group, and that they are not Little Russians, but real Europeans, or rather, candidates for Europeans who must prove and justify their Europeanness by the fact that they, one way or another, will fight with Russia.
And Serbia is for us the most western outpost of the Russian world. Serbian people, let's put it this way. And this outpost is in a very vulnerable, difficult situation, both economic and geopolitical. The collapse of Yugoslavia led to the fact that the Serbian people, significant, quite great, who played a very large role in the history of Europe in general, and the world, accordingly, are now in a divided position. Naturally he tries to defend himself, at least somehow. These attempts are quite weak, to be honest, but at least they are being made.
But if we turn to the experience of the Serbian world, then there is also the experience of unrecognized republics. Negative and not very positive. The negative one is the Republic of Serbian Krajina, which was simply destroyed, and the not very positive one is the Republika Srpska, which continues to defend its sovereignty for more than twenty years in difficult conditions. Studying this difficult experience and transferring it to the experience of the Russian republics of Donbass and Transnistria, I would like to understand what scenario they should expect to come to fruition?
An attempt at military aggression obviously threatens the Donbass Republics. This is quite obvious and almost inevitable. We understand this perfectly well both from the practical steps and from the rhetoric of the Ukrainian leadership, which naturally is not independent, but is a gathering of Gauleiters in territory that is being developed by the West. Moreover, it is being developed intensively; we are talking, in particular, about the ever-increasing military presence on the territory of the so-called Ukraine. Moreover, this is not only an American presence, but also an increasing British one. According to the information I have, during the active management of British intelligence officers, special operations, which in particular are being conducted against the Donbass republics.
And the Russian leadership, of course, faces the question of strategic and tactical solutions to this problem. I'm afraid there are simply no simple, easy and non-radical solutions left. History confronts us with the need to make decisions. And these decisions, one way or another, will be of a tough confrontational nature. If we want to remain a great power. And we don’t want to fall victim to Western policies someday in the foreseeable future.
"PolitNavigator": The leader of the Bosnian Serbs, Milorad Dodik, announced his readiness to recreate the army of the Republika Srpska. Do you think he will succeed?
In the Republika Srpska there live guys who, as the practice of past years shows us, were capable of fighting for their freedom. Therefore, I sincerely hope that Milorad Dodik will succeed in something. True, I don’t know him personally, but I have a lot of common comrades with him.
But already now Sarajevo and the West are expressing serious dissatisfaction with these plans of the Republika Srpska. Should we expect that opposition to the intentions of the Bosnian Serbs will only increase?
I think yes, it's worth it. The Dayton agreements placed the Serbian people in the position of an artificially divided people and in the position of an oppressed people. Such European people are pariahs.
The most curious thing is that the presence of the Republika Srpska’s own army does not contradict the Dayton Agreements in any way.
As soon as part of Bosnia and Herzegovina - and the Republika Srpska is legally part of Bosnia and Herzegovina - allows itself to take some independent steps, and it can afford to, both in the field of financial-economic and military, a wave will rise accordingly, and a scandal will arise. will be big.
But, nevertheless, I would like to understand how technically the Bosnian Serbs want to do this, since it so happened that the maximum number of Yugoslav defense plants went to the Federation of (Bosniak-Croat) BiH, and the Serbs – very few.
Yes, I know. The Republika Srpska will have difficulties with the technical support of its army, but the fraternal Republic of Serbia is nearby. True, as we know, there are, first of all, Bosniak patrols on the border.
How could Russia help the Republika Srpska in the current situation?
For now, only one thing can be said: if Russia feels like a great power, then, of course, it needs to support the Serbian people as a whole. But the Serbian people are in a very difficult situation, and in a number of territories they are in a front-line situation. One of these territories, of course, is the Republika Srpska, the other is Kosovo. The question for Russia is how ready Greater Serbia, with its capital in Belgrade, is for Russian help. Because the government of Greater Serbia is forced to maneuver between various geopolitical forces, in particular between the West and Russia.
In this light, how can one explain the strengthening of military cooperation between Russia and Serbia: joint exercises, supplies of Russian military equipment to Belgrade? At the same time, Serbia itself restarted its own military-industrial complex, and was even accepted into the international club of arms exporters. Why is the Serbian side arming itself, and how, in general, should military cooperation between Belgrade and Moscow be developed?
I am a supporter of the maximum development of relations between Belgrade and Moscow, of the most friendly nature. As for the development of the Serbian military-industrial complex and the buildup of the combat power of Serbian troops, it is obvious that this is not happening in a situation where Serbia feels no threat. On the contrary, it is clear that it feels external pressure, an external threat, and continues to do so. And it is clear that the Serbian leadership cannot do without this ( militarization – ed. ), because it is unknown where and when the flames of that war ( of the 90s – ed. ), which, in fact, were only extinguished, will flare up again.
Having become a State Duma deputy, do you plan to somehow lobby for the further development of Russian-Serbian ties?
Of course, as far as it is in my power, I will naturally do this. As one of the many deputy heads of the State Duma Committee on the CIS countries, I will, first of all, have to concentrate on my core activities, but as far as strengthening Russian-Serbian relations depends on me, I will do everything for this. As the head of the Donbass Volunteer Union, I also did this.
In particular, the Union of Donbass Volunteers, at its own expense, restored the burial places of Russian volunteers who died for the freedom of the Serbian people back in 1876. This was exactly a year before the Russian-Turkish War, then Russian volunteers, with the permission of Emperor Alexander II, went to Serbia in the amount of either ten, I don’t remember exactly now, or twelve thousand people. Several thousand of them died for the freedom of Serbia, because the fighting was heavy.
There were heroes of the undeclared, voluntary war of the Russian Empire. Of course, it was primarily professional military personnel who were traveling. We just established the grave of Colonel Raevsky, who died there, a representative of a famous family. As you understand, the burial places were practically abandoned, some of them, for example, where the remains of 400 - 500 Russian volunteers lay, began to erode, the bones began to wash out into the river. And together with our Serbian comrades, we erected a monument in that place, concreted the river bank, recreated the crypt, and erected memorial crosses. We carry the memory of Russian-Serbian friendship. It’s true that few people remember this in Russia, but in Serbia they remember it well. I remember how we were met there; all the local authorities were there, starting from the mayor of the city of Niš, one of the large Serbian cities, and ending with the head of the gendarmerie. They remember, I repeat, thank God! It's a pity that we forget.
Indeed, it is very important that the Russian people remember who they are and who their friends are.
Certainly. And they remembered that the mission of protecting the Slavic world, which can now rightfully be called the Russian world, because today’s Russia is the personification of this Slavic world, lies with us. Because the Slavic world, in its geopolitical and political hopes, as well as in its desire to preserve its Orthodox faith intact, has no one to turn to except Russia. And this is a sad, but quite objective reality.
And in conclusion, I would like to ask you, as a person who played one of the leading roles at the beginning of the Donbass conflict, to evaluate the Serbian volunteers who fought for the people's republics.
Volunteers came to us from all over the world, but quite a lot of Serbs came. Naturally, there were different people among them. And they fought very differently, there were people who fought magnificently, and there were people who, mostly, sitting in the rear, talked about how they fought. In general, Serbian volunteers are bright people, capable of showing valor, and their presence was important not so much from a purely military, applied point of view, but as a certain part of our Russian ideology, as evidence that the common Russian idea, the idea of unifying the Slavic world , she was born centuries ago and lives to this day.
And among other things, it would not be amiss to remind you that the land of Donbass is also, to some extent, Serbian land. For example, there is the Slavyanoserbsky district, where Serbian settlers, emigrants from Serbia, which at that time was completely under the heel of the Ottomans, lived since the time of Catherine II. And it is natural that it was the Serbs in fairly large numbers who went to fight for the land of Donbass, because they went to fight, if not for the land of their direct fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers, then for the land that their closest relatives had once settled.
English version :: Read in English Alexander Borodai: The simultaneous escalation of tensions in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Donbas is no coincidence