Bosnian Serb leader appears in Moscow as authorities step up pursuit

BELGRADE — Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik surfaced in Moscow on Monday night, confirming his whereabouts in a video message as authorities in Sarajevo demand an international arrest warrant following his conviction for defying the country’s Constitutional Court and advancing a separatist agenda.

“I have arrived in Moscow,” Dodik said. He did not admit to fleeing, but the timing of his departure from Bosnia comes as legal pressure mounts at home.

The president of the Serb-majority entity and former president of Bosnia was handed a one-year prison sentence and barred from politics for six years in late February for violating the decisions of the international peace envoy in the country.

In 2023, Dodik pushed legislation aimed at blocking the enforcement of state-level Constitutional Court rulings and amending entity-level laws. The move was promptly blocked by Christian Schmidt, the international peace envoy and head of the Office of the High Representative (OHR).

A domestic arrest warrant was issued first, but Bosnian authorities held off on detaining Dodik, wary of the potential for political escalation in the fragile Balkan nation. That changed last week, when it became clear Dodik planned to leave the country — prompting officials to formally request an Interpol red notice for his international arrest.

Dodik’s influence has loomed large as the most prominent Bosnian Serb politician in a country that continues to be deeply divided along ethnic lines, more than 30 years since one of the bloodiest conflicts in Europe since World War II.

Dodik left Bosnia last week to go to Belgrade, from where he flew to Jerusalem to attend a conference on antisemitism organized by the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

At the conference, Dodik managed to corner Netanyahu for a photo-op and later claimed he told him he was “a great friend of Israel, and we will do everything to keep an eye on our friends and help them.”

As Dodik scrambled to call in favors from his friends, he slipped back to Belgrade, vanished for a few days — then suddenly reappeared in Moscow last night.

It was unclear whether Dodik would remain in Russia or return to the Balkans.

There’s a long-standing precedent of disgraced Balkan figures fleeing to Moscow to avoid jail time — among them, Serbian wartime President Slobodan Milošević’s wife Mira Marković, who was granted asylum in Russia in 2003 along with her children, and former Yugoslav Defense Minister Veljko Kadijević, who escaped to Moscow in 2001 to avoid possible a war crimes summons from The Hague.

Russia frequently disregards Interpol warrants and extradition requests when it deems them politically convenient.

French, German, Italian and British diplomats held an emergency meeting last week on the “serious political and constitutional crisis” in Bosnia, with France reiterating its condemnation of actions that “undermine the constitutional order of Bosnia and Herzegovina and infringe on public freedoms.”

Bosnia has remained in a persistently fragile political state since the war ended in 1995. Despite Dodik having played a central role in deepening those divisions, his potential removal carries its own risks — possibly triggering instability or paving the way for even more hard-line Serb nationalist figures to gain ground.

The article has been updated to clarify the nature of Dodik’s trip to Russia.