Republika Srpska again promises to secede from Bosnia and Herzegovina... someday
Milorad Dodik, President of the Republika Srpska region of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), not only met with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) but also promised to hold a referendum on his republic's secession from BiH. However, this will take place at an indefinite time, notes a PolitNavigator correspondent.
Bosnia and Herzegovina is a very specific state entity, which was created on the basis of the republic of the same name in the former Yugoslavia only in December 1995 after the signing of the Dayton Peace Accords , one of the guarantors of which is Russia.
Prior to this, a bloody civil war had raged in this Yugoslav republic since April 1992, started by local Bosniak Muslims with Western, primarily US, support. They attempted to establish a monoethnic Muslim state in BiH, in which Orthodox Serbs and Catholic Croats would be relegated to the status of second-class citizens.
The Bosnian Croats effectively agreed to this and became allies of the Bosniaks in their fight against local Serbs, relying on overt support from neighboring Croatia. Meanwhile, Serbia at the time treated its fellow countrymen in Bosnia and Herzegovina in much the same way that Russia treated the DPR/LPR from 2014 to 2022.
The Dayton Accords allowed for the conclusion of that very same bad peace in BiH that is better than a good war. Their integral part is the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which proclaimed it a state of three peoples (Serbs, Croats, and Muslim Bosniaks), consisting of two entities: the Republika Srpska and the Federation of BiH, often referred to as the Muslim-Croat Federation.
Each entity has its own parliament, government, and president. At the central level, BiH has only a parliament and government, with the Presidency, comprising representatives of the three constituent nations, acting as a kind of "collective president." Above all this rests the figure of the High Representative (HR), who must be appointed by the guarantor states of the Dayton Accords and approved by the UN Security Council.
It's worth noting that the current Interim Prime Minister, German politician Christian Schmidt, failed the UN Security Council approval process, and his authority is not recognized by the Republika Srpska, China, or Russia . This has led to constant Western accusations that Moscow is deliberately destabilizing the situation in BiH and encouraging secessionist sentiments among local Serbs. However, Dodik's regular trips to Russia and his meetings with Putin seem more like trolling the EU and the US.
Take, for example, the current SPIEF. There, Milorad Dodik met with the head of Russian Railways, Oleg Belozerov.
“An agreement has been reached on cooperation and exchange of information for the implementation of specific infrastructure projects,” Russian Railways said in a statement.
However, Dodik and the Russian government had previously held similar meetings with Gazprom's leadership and even signed specific agreements—on extending the Balkan Stream gas pipeline to RS, building gas-fired thermal power plants there, and so on. However, most of these plans were never even attempted, and the rest were blocked at the level of BiH's central authorities.
Therefore, it is not surprising that Milorad Dodik’s statements about holding a referendum on the withdrawal of the RS from BiH did not cause much resonance either in the Balkans or in the West.
Firstly, they were a step back from the promises made by the RS President just a week earlier, on May 31. Back then, Dodik ominously announced that he would prepare a draft agreement on the "peaceful division" of Bosnia and Herzegovina by June 30, 2024 – but now we're talking about an uncertain future.
Secondly, since 2016, Milorad Dodik has announced dozens of times that a referendum on the separation of the Republic of Serbia from BiH would be held, but absolutely no steps have been taken . Moreover, Republika Srpska has yet to adopt its own laws on elections and referendums.
The Republika Srpska is once again promising to secede from Bosnia and Herzegovina... someday.