Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik said on Saturday that he would ask Russia for "some kind of security support," after holding what he said were four meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow over the past two days.
Dodik said he was assured by Putin that they would "stay in touch on all issues of joint agreements", and that "for everything they talked about joint activities, Putin said: 'we will do it'".
"What we want to offer and demand from Russia in the coming period is a series of issues that can be described as a kind of security support, not to mention guarantees from Russia for our political and territorial position, and we derive this mainly from the fact that Russia is a guarantor of the Dayton Agreement," Dodik told media from the Bosnian Serb entity, Republika Srpska, in Moscow.
In an interview with Radio Television of Republika Srpska (RTRS), the Srna agency and Alternative Television (ATV), he stressed that Russia "definitely supports the position of that agreement, but not others, such as France, which is doing everything to degrade it."
Dodik had also met with Putin on April 1, when he traveled to Moscow and returned to Republika Srpska, avoiding arrest, although the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina has issued a national arrest warrant for him, accusing him of violating Bosnia's constitutional order.
Dodik has so far evaded arrest within Bosnia, despite the country having 16 police agencies with the power to arrest him.
The leaders of Republika Srpska, in particular President Dodik, are criticized by Western governments for trying to separate the Serbian entity from Bosnia.
Days ago, the international High Representative in Bosnia, Christian Schmidt, presenting the six-month report to the UN Security Council on the situation in Bosnia, stressed that the country is in a "political crisis, but not a security crisis", and that "there is no risk of war".
However, he stressed that the situation regarding the Dayton Agreement has never been worse and that everything started after the first-instance verdict against Dodik, which was used by the Republika Srpska authorities as justification for steps towards “de facto secession”, including the initiative to draft a new Constitution for the Serbian entity.
Meanwhile, Dodik was among dozens of world leaders who attended World War II Victory Day celebrations in Moscow.
Besides Dodik, the only European leaders who attended were Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić and Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico.
Putin and Vucic held a bilateral meeting, in which Putin assessed that "the Russian-Serbian dialogue is constantly developing" and that the leaderships of the two countries are in "regular contact."
The bilateral meeting between Putin and Vucic in Moscow was the first official meeting since Russia began its full-scale occupation of Ukraine in 2022.
The parade in Moscow was condemned by Western countries, which called it "propaganda" with which Putin is trying to justify aggression against Ukraine./ REL (A2 Televizion)
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