Six months ago, Milorad Dodik, the former leader of the Bosnian Serbs, was under US sanctions, with Washington accusing him of corruption and inciting separatism that threatens to reignite ethnic conflict in the Balkans.
On Friday, however, he found himself at the White House, where he met with President Donald Trump's spokeswoman, Carolyn Levitt, who posed for a photo with Dodik and other senior Bosnian Serb officials.
In a rare interview with international media, Dodik told the Financial Times (FT) that he has "high expectations" of Trump and is encouraged by the president's condemnation of previous US attempts at state-building abroad.
“When he says 'America first', it encourages us to say 'Republika Srpska first',” Dodik told the FT.
Dodik reiterated his calls for independence for Republika Srpska, the majority-Serb entity he led for more than two decades, first as prime minister and then as president. “We are here to seek support to define our status,” he said.
The Trump administration lifted sanctions on Dodik and dozens of his allies and relatives in October after he agreed to respect the decision of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina and step down as president of Republika Srpska.
The move, which represented a break with long-standing American policy in the region, was seen as a bold but risky attempt to rein in Dodik, after his refusal to step down plunged Bosnia into a deep political crisis.
However, Dodik's visit to Washington suggests that he has no intention of retiring from politics or abandoning calls for secession, which threaten the stability of the multiethnic state.
Speaking through an interpreter, Dodik described the Dayton Peace Agreement as irreparable in an interview with the Financial Times and sharply attacked High Representative Christian Schmidt, who is overseeing the implementation of the agreement, claiming that he “has no legitimacy” in Bosnia.
Dodik sought to portray Bosnian Serbs as vulnerable Christians and argued that the power-sharing arrangement among the three main ethnic groups—Orthodox Serbs, Catholic Croats, and Muslim Bosniaks—meant that the country was run by a “Muslim government.” A leaflet distributed by the delegation in Washington was titled “The Clash of Civilizations in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” invoking Samuel Huntington’s thesis that post-Cold War conflicts would be driven by cultural and religious divisions.
Claims of persecution of Christians have resonated strongly in Trump's second term, as the US president has made defending Christians around the world a priority. In December, the US military carried out airstrikes in northwestern Nigeria, where Trump claimed a "genocide" of Christians was underway.
US Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the Trump administration should be "ashamed" of its decision to lift sanctions on Dodik and called for them to be urgently reinstated.
"Mr. Dodik is using secessionist rhetoric and undermining the integrity of the Dayton Peace Agreement, which is in complete contradiction to the administration's reasoning for removing Dodik and his associates from the sanctions list late last year," said Shahin.
Dodik “feels further emboldened,” said Michael Murphy, who was the US ambassador to Bosnia until last year. “He reads the administration’s decision to lift sanctions as confirmation of his worldview.”
“The problem with the administration’s stance toward Dodik is that he provides support and encouragement to ethno-nationalists across the region,” Murphy added.
Over the past year, Republika Srpska has signed contracts worth hundreds of thousands of dollars with lobbyists close to the Trump administration. They have sought to portray the Bosnian Serb leader as a kind of Balkan Trump - a provocateur who, they say, is being pursued by politically motivated legal proceedings.
Dodik agreed with such a portrayal, claiming that Trump and Republika Srpska have "a problem with the same people: the globalist liberal elite, which is destroying Europe right now."
A Bosnian Serb delegation was in Washington last week for the National Prayer Breakfast. The annual event, which was also attended by Donald Trump, brings together thousands of people from the political and business elites of the US and around the world.
Dodik met and took photos with US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and US House Speaker Mike Johnson. The Bosnian Serb delegation also met with Michael Flynn, Trump's former national security adviser, as well as several members of Congress.
“There’s no doubt that (Dodik’s camp) sees this as a kind of grand showdown,” said Jasmin Mujanovic, a Balkans expert at the New Lines Institute. “They see themselves as part of a large far-right coalition, the core of the MAGA movement, that is ready to reshape the international order.”
Upon his return from the US, Dodik stated that during his stay in Washington, RS representatives met with 14 congressmen, several senators, as well as other important political figures.
"The plan to destroy Republika Srpska has failed. And the Dayton Agreement has been destroyed and there is no chance of it being repaired. It is obvious that Muslims are putting pressure on us Serbs, to endanger Christians," Dodik said.
He added that there is also an idea for the RS to impose sanctions on the High Representative in BiH, Kristijan Šmit.
"In the US, we also spoke with the White House spokesperson, we talked about Republika Srpska. We emphasized that BiH is unacceptable to us, we will do our job and we will not give up on our idea. We went exclusively as representatives of Republika Srpska, not BiH," Dodik said.
The State Department did not respond to a request for comment from the FT about Dodik's visit to Washington. A White House official said Carolyn Levitt's meeting with Dodik had been at the request of the delegation. "The meeting lasted about ten minutes and there were exchanges of courtesy messages," he said.
The visit by Bosnian Serb officials to Washington came just days before a partial rerun of the presidential election in Republika Srpska on Sunday, after the November vote was marred by irregularities. Dodik called the victory of Sinisa Karan of his SNSD a “warm-up” for the general election in October this year.
“Although he cannot run for office, (Dodik) still maintains control,” said Adnan Ćerimagić, a senior analyst at the European Stability Initiative.
On Monday, Dodik again emphasized "the right of peoples to self-determination," stating that the independence of Republika Srpska is the political goal of the authorities in that entity and that they will not give up on it.
He stated that he would "use all his strength to be part of the victory called an independent Republika Srpska" and added that "Muslims invented Srebrenica because there is no state without bribery."
"If Muslims continue to push further, they will gain our right to self-determination. It is not difficult for us to explain to our friends on a global level that this is about the efforts of Muslims from Sarajevo to subordinate Christians in BiH to their ambitions of a unitary system for BiH," he added.
The FT recalls that throughout his period in power, Dodik cultivated close relations with Vladimir Putin and other regional allies of the Russian president, especially with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who offered him support when the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina ruled that he must step down from office.
Dodik, according to Ćerimagić, wants to force the international community to renegotiate the Dayton Peace Agreement.
"If the American administration is open to it, he will turn them into his best friends," Ćerimagić said of Dodik. "Putin and Hungary already are."
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