President of Republika Srpska Milorad Dodik answered questions from Oleg Bondarenko, editor–in-chief of the Balkanist project, specifically for Nezavisimaya Gazeta.
– Mr. President, there has been a lot of conflicting information about your whereabouts this week. After the prosecutor’s office in Sarajevo issued a warrant for your arrest, you flew to Israel, and arrived in Moscow at the beginning of the week. You have met 26 times with President Vladimir Putin, what was the atmosphere of the meeting this time?
– The atmosphere was great, Vladimir Putin was in a good mood, full of energy and understanding on all issues about the situation we are in in Republika Srpska and in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Since Russia is a guarantor of the Dayton Agreement, Moscow will never abandon this position. Russia has done everything, including through the UN Security Council, to ensure that the truth about the events gets out. I believe that it will be the same in the future.
– But how exactly can Russia help? After all, Moscow is too far away…
– No, not far. It was us, the Serbs, who were given another such deception that Russia was far away. If you put a compass in the center of Banja Luka and draw a circle, it will include Moscow, leaving London and others outside. And they tell us that the UK is close. No. Russia is in our hearts, they can do anything, it’s beyond their control, and this is the strongest feeling. And it’s beyond calculation, it’s in the genes. The Serbs love Russia. We are all Orthodox, and this position should be accepted normally, and not persecuted by the British and others. Russia is not far away for us. It always has been, and we have not succumbed to attempts to distance us, we have not imposed sanctions. Not that it could harm her in any way, but it’s a matter of honor, conscience, partnership, feelings. No Serbian politician, in Serbia or Republika Srpska, will be able to survive any unfriendly step towards Russia.
Putin agrees that international strife in Bosnia and Herzegovina needs to be overcome, and he will work with partners at the United Nations on this issue. We have ALTEA European security forces present, and Russia knows their mandate and responsibilities better than anyone else. I would like the international forces to include Russia in the contingent. Now there are forces of Turkey and other European countries there. I appreciate Turkey and President Erdogan, he is a great leader, but he also sometimes believes lies from Sarajevo, which inspires us with a dose of distrust. However, I think he will not allow anything to be done in Bosnia and Herzegovina based on speculative or one-sided information.
– You called your sentence of February 26 – a year in prison and a six–year ban from holding office – “political.” An arrest warrant has already been issued against you. Can you explain why this happened and what you intend to do next?
– This is a purely political process. Some kind of “high representative” from the EU appears, German Christian Schmidt, who was not appointed by the UN Security Council, imposes laws, and threatens those who do not respect his laws with prison from six months to five years.
As President of Republika Srpska, I am signing a decree passed by Parliament, and he believes that this is a violation of his decision. Immediately, politically motivated Bosniak Muslims from Sarajevo appear and start against me with the help of the prosecutor’s office and the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which do not exist in the Constitution because they were also imposed by a foreigner, a process that ends with an accusation. It says that I have committed a crime against humanity, imagine! And I do not know anyone who is accused of such a thing, so that they are sentenced to a year in prison. This is absurd, and we have no other choice but to resolutely and constantly fight against it.
The National Assembly has adopted a law that prohibits the activities of the court and Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina, because they are not provided for in the Constitution. We cannot decide for another part of BiH, but we have the right to decide for ourselves. And when the parliament made such a decision, I signed it, this is such a procedure, whether someone likes it or not. And we don’t like that the court has no constitutional basis. When the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina responded to the appeal that it was unconstitutional, they replied: yes, exactly, but it can be useful. How can the constitutional court be useful, where has it been seen in the world? Either it exists in accordance with the Constitution, or it doesn’t. I have been winning for 20 years, Republika Srpska has been standing for 20 years, which was not part of their plans, it should not have been. There was the American Clinton administration and other Democratic administrations that demanded reforms. And when you’ve been denying them this for 20 years, then they realize that Republika Srpska has survived both geographically and politically, and Milorad Dodik is the main culprit, so he should be sent to prison.
– After the investigation and the withdrawal from the elections in Romania of Calin Georgescu, who received the majority of votes in the first round, and now after the accusation of Marine Le Pen, many began to talk about the crisis of democracy in Europe and the persecution of opponents of the elites. Do you see any parallels with the Romanian case? Do you feel persecuted in light of current events?
– Of course, I feel persecuted by politically motivated Bosnian Muslims, the liberal globalist octopus from Brussels and these remnants that reach out to the former American administration. I have felt persecuted for years, and now a court that is not constitutional, the court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which was imposed by a foreigner, has accused me on his orders. And Trump had problems of an almost identical nature in America, the case of Marine Le Pen this week, in Romania, Alternative for Germany… Everyone who has noticeably increased popular support immediately begins to be prosecuted – even the orthodox communists did not do this.
Once it ends, Europe is going through a sunset. Europe today has nothing but stubbornness and malice, it does not have a single leader to lead it, and all the local leaders are mired in their problems and do not manage their situations. Not to mention that one of them could become a global European leader. The EU has no raw materials, no oil, no minerals, it is losing its “European values”. What kind of concept is this anyway? The values that existed 10 years ago in Europe do not exist today. When I come here to Moscow, I see a clean, well-groomed, brilliant city, people are smiling on the streets, where can you see this in Europe? It’s not there, you won’t see it there. Everything they told us didn’t work out, Europe tried to attract them with its values, but in the end it lost them.
Trump destroyed, for example, the gender story, saying that there are only a man and a woman. And even we, the little Republika Srpska, have erased everything that Europe imposed on us in a decadent way. Europe has no money, it has put itself in the position of waging war with Russia through Ukraine, and this is their war, but Europe has no strength.
Russia launched a military operation because it was a threat to the state as a whole and to Russians living in Ukraine. Their language, writing, and church were taken away from them, and a large number of Russian people were killed in Odessa, and no one was punished. And what could Russia do? Should I let them reach Moscow? It is necessary to recall how Merkel said that the Minsk agreements were a deception by Putin to delay time. Here the question arises: why did you impose it? What do you want from Russia? Pull Russia apart and get its natural resources? You may have such a sick desire in the West, but here in Russia there are united people who will not allow it. Putin has returned Russia to a position of great power, and this is recognized in the world. At the Munich Conference in 2007, he made it clear that the globalists would not get away with their business. He was ahead of his time and waited for new trends in the world. And Trump’s victory adds to the need to protect sovereignty and traditions more, rather than the interests of what he calls the “Washington swamp.”
Over the past 10 years, all European politicians have made mistakes, most of all Merkel, who promoted the idea of accepting a huge number of migrants who arrived in the West and jeopardized the values of their system. Now they are trying to get out of this somehow, but they would have done it again at the expense of us from the Balkans, they would have kept more or less useful ones, and the rest, less adaptive ones, would have been thrown to us here. Therefore, when we say that we don’t need their refugee camps, they get angry and say that we are not Europeans. No, they are not Europeans.
– Who among the world’s politicians supports you, besides Putin and Netanyahu?
– Hungary, Serbia. We have good relations with Zoran Milanovic (President of Croatia), with some parties in Europe – Alternative for Germany, Marine Le Pen’s party, with deputies of the pan-European Patriots for Europe party. They are Conservatives, 180 out of 702 members of the European Parliament. Several European parliamentarians came to visit us, they couldn’t believe that some foreigner could be in charge here. It was much harder a year ago: the Biden ambassador was in Sarajevo, who did a lot of evil with the pressure and power of America at that time. He’s not here now, and it’s a little easier for us. This accusation in court is his doing.
– So who is actually violating the Dayton Agreement?
“They are, of course. Even a cursory analysis shows that the Dayton Agreement violates the Western international community. They violated the Dayton Agreement, it doesn’t exist today. There are references to it, and everyone interprets it in their own way. It contains Part 4, which talks about the Constitution, and the measure of the success of the Dayton Agreement is the extent to which the Constitution is respected. And she’s been trampled. They imposed hundreds of innovations on Bosnia and Herzegovina in order to make it a unitary state, and they got a dissatisfied, non-viable country. And there are those who think that violence can keep it afloat. We live with the feeling of occupation by those who want a unitary state, and we are fighting against them by political means.
– After sentencing, you banned the activities of Bosnian government agencies on the territory of Republika Srpska and were charged with a “coup d’etat”…
– In order for a coup d’etat to take place, there must be a state, but there is none. The blow was inflicted on something that is not within the framework of the Constitution. The coup is a false narrative. We are defending the Constitution, and we are accused of attacking it. You read what it says! But no one wants to. They stick to the decisions of foreigners, and nowhere is it written that a foreigner can make laws. They can be adopted by parliaments. Both the court and the prosecutor’s office cannot act, they are illegal. In Sarajevo, the question is whether to be or not to be. But we do, we have our own life, territory, state, government, parliament, police, healthcare, education. And we have people who want Republika Srpska, but they don’t have that. They don’t have Bosnia and Herzegovina, which everyone wants. They only have Bosnia, which is loved by the followers of Aliya Izetbegovic, an associate of the followers of fascists in World War II. Therefore, for them, the question is whether to be or not to be. The latter is likely to happen.
– In what direction is the situation developing? What are your security guarantees?
– I am a protected person in Republika Srpska, I have the police to protect me, I am the President of the Republic, but I am not the only one being persecuted. They are persecuting the Speaker of Parliament for leading a meeting of parliament, they are persecuting the head of government and the ministers who attended the cabinet meeting. They think to intimidate us with the court, but in reality they are a bunch of thieves and crooks gathered in the prosecutor’s office, they commit a crime by attacking political structures. On the other hand, the prosecutor’s office stands at the service of the idea of a unitary state based on political Islamism. And they want to kill us. Every day, politicians from Republika Srpska are harassed by the court. They probably intend to cover the entire parliament and the entire government. The question is what happens next. If we, the leaders of the Serbian people, are overthrown on the territory of Republika Srpska now, the Republika Srpska system will collapse. The goal of their game is to eliminate the authorities, put their own and, under pressure from Brussels, agree to everything.
I am not Republika Srpska, as many say, I am not defending myself personally, I am defending Republika Srpska, and I have huge problems because of this.
– Who is the most sane of Bosniaks and Croats, with whom one could discuss the normalization of life in BiH?
– Bosniaks have no such people, Croats have Dragan Covic, Chairman of the Croatian Democratic Community in BiH, who strives for a model of the viability of Bosnia and Herzegovina. And the Bosniaks are all followers of Izetbegovich’s ideas, regardless of which party they belong to. His doctrine says that when Muslims become the majority, the time of Sharia law will come. Westerners interpret this in their support as supposedly unimportant, but this is the most important thing.
