Exclusive Interview: Milorad Dodik Says Biden Allies Want to Remove Him ‘Before I Can Speak to Trump’

While all eyes are on Trump trying to broker peace between Putin and Zelenskyy, an unelected bureaucracy is moving against a sitting president in Bosnia and Herzegovina. President Milorad Dodik of Republika Srpska — one of Donald Trump’s earliest staunch supporters and a fixture in Balkan politics for decades was in his office when the news about an attempt at his removal outside the electoral process arrived. He was not particularly surprised. 

“That was all expected — it’s their mechanism. Nothing surprises me anymore,” he told The Pavlovic Today in his first in-depth conversation since Bosnia’s Central Election Commission moved to strip him of his mandate. To him, the move is not an isolated act but the latest in a long chain of what he calls “Biden-era residue” — a calculated attempt, he insists, “to stop me from speaking to Trump.”

Speaking to The Pavlovic Today in an exclusive, no-holds-barred interview that stretched over two hours, Dodik opened up as he never has before, with no questions off limits. From Biden and Trump to Putin, Orbán, Palestine, Dayton, and the future of Bosnia, he laid out his case in unfiltered detail.

An unapologetic anti-woke critic of what he calls “the liberal octopus” engulfing the world, Dodik describes Donald Trump as “the savior of our civilization.” He speaks with the blunt, unhurried certainty of a man convinced that the Clinton–Biden political establishment has marked him for removal. “They are now making a celebration out of it,” he said. “They want to see me out.”

At the center of the political storm is Christian Schmidt — Bosnia’s foreign-appointed High Representative — a man Dodik points out was never elected by a single Bosnian citizen. “In my case, he passed a law making it a criminal offense to disrespect the High Representative,” Dodik said.

Schmidt, Dodik argues, holds his position “illegitimately” without confirmation from the UN Security Council and without the consent of Republika Srpska, a signatory party to the Dayton Peace Agreement that ended Bosnia’s 1990s war.

“Christian Schmidt turns up here as a ‘private individual’ and starts working,” Dodik said. “Of course, behind him stood the Biden administration, the EU — and he began behaving, literally, like a bull in a china shop.”

For Dodik, the heart of the mandate-removal fight concerns judicial legitimacy. Schmidt’s authority comes from the so-called “Bonn Powers” — sweeping rights to impose laws and remove officials, not part of the original Dayton Agreement, but adopted in 1997 at a Peace Implementation Council meeting in Bonn. 

To Dodik, it is an undemocratic hijacking of the political process. To his supporters, it’s a foreign assault on the will of the people. To his critics, it’s overdue accountability. To anyone paying attention, it’s a case study in the questions Bosnia and Herzegovina now faces. Questions, no democracy is comfortable confronting that extend far beyond one man’s political fate. 

How can an unelected European official override the democratic process? That very question drove the Brexit debate — yet the EU now wields such authority in countries where it disapproves of the government or the electoral outcome.

Is Bosnia and Herzegovina “Europe’s last colony”? Who truly governs the country? How long can “temporary” powers, imposed three decades ago in the name of peace, remain before they become the system itself? And if the same rules applied elsewhere — if an outsider could strike down the mandate of the sitting president in Washington — how would America react? Or Britain? Or France?

“That’s a ludicrous decision,” Dodik said flatly. The Venice Commission of the Council of Europe — “if that still carries any weight,” Dodik quipped — has made clear in 2005 that the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina is the country’s supreme legal authority. Entity constitutions, including that of Republika Srpska, exist within its framework. Neither can be rewritten or overridden by any law or statute of lower rank.

Those who are screaming for his removal outside the election process, Dodik likes to remind that the Constitution of Republika Srpska states that the president of Republika Srpska can lose his or her mandate in only two situations — if the president resigns, or if the president is recalled by the citizens, a process which, under current law, is carried out through a referendum. “And that is all. No other situation is possible.” 

Dodik maintains that the Central Election Commission of Bosnia and Herzegovina (CEC) “has no authority to conduct elections for the president of the republic. It has no authority to conduct elections for local communities — and yet it does. They have taken that authority away from us.”

With Republika Srpska’s elections a year away, the obvious question hangs: Why now? “To send Trump a message that ‘Dodik is a criminal!’” Dodik said. “If I stay in office, maybe I could have reached Trump, explained things to him, and somehow appealed to his emotions so he could understand what is happening here.”

He pointed to his own record — two decades at the helm of Republika Srpska over the entity’s 30-year history — and to strong polling numbers “even better” than before.

“The only way to remove me, to destroy my political party, and to undermine the possibility of Republika Srpska continuing to exist, is for them to remove me by non-democratic means.”

Dodik says Trump’s words struck an emotional chord with him when, at the inauguration, the president declared: “There are only two genders, male and female.” As a man of faith, Dodik added, he “cannot watch the decadence that has overtaken Europeans. God forbid.”

Dodik insists that “Trump truly is changing the world,” and that this alone “is something that gives hope.” Trump’s survival — from impeachments to assassination attempts — has been a personal motivator. “That political victory of his is a victory over those fabricated political processes.”

There are moments, Dodik concedes, when the imbalance of power between great nations and small ones leaves him feeling powerless. “The great powers’ arrogance sometimes refuses to look into the details, sticking instead to a line of imposition and many other things.” But when he considers how Trump campaigned after his legal investigations and assassination attempts Dodik says he concludes that he has “neither reason nor the right to lose strength” in his own political fight for his people in Republika Srpska. 

“If Trump says the Biden administration was the worst in U.S. history, then you can imagine the kinds of measures it has sown across the world, including here in Republika Srpska and Bosnia and Herzegovina.”

He quickly pointed out to the shutdown of the USAID as an example of what he calls a “right move” by the Trump administration, alleging the agency “was doing dirty business.” Only part of its spending, he claims, was visible in Bosnia and Herzegovina, “while the larger portion of the money was allocated to companies of USAID officials in the United States.”

Dodik says he has all the details. “I have all the information on that,” he noted, emphasizing that “everyone has been informed and that an investigation is underway. Our police are conducting the investigation.”

And with that, Dodik leaned forward, ready to tell his story.

First came the sanctions

By his own confession, Milorad Dodik was supporting Donald Trump from the moment the New York businessman came down the golden escalator in Trump Tower. But that loyalty did not end well for him.

“I received my first U.S. sanctions two days before President Trump’s first inauguration in his first term in 2016,” Dodik said. “This happened because I had encouraged members of the Serbian community of Republika Srpska in certain parts of America to vote for Trump. Then, I received an invitation to the Inauguration. Two days before President Trump’s inauguration, the Obama administration blocked my visa and imposed sanctions on me.”

During Trump’s first term, Dodik said, “I was unable to reach him or his people to explain the situation.” He added that “ever since” he has been persecuted by Trump’s sworn enemies.

​​Dodik said U.S. pressure on him escalated after Biden returned to office in 2021, citing the Constitutional Court’s move to abolish Republika Srpska’s Republic Day on January 9, which coincides with the Orthodox holiday of St. Stephen’s Day. Dodik noted that Republika Srpska had marked its national holiday for 25 years before it was struck down “by a court decision — with three foreign judges and two Muslim judges — who declared it unlawful, saying it was offensive to Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina, although they too could take a day off.”

As a result, Dodik said 56 people — including top officials, ministers, parliamentarians, his entire staff, and even technical personnel — were sanctioned by the Biden administration “simply for taking part in the celebration of that Christian holiday.”

Dodik: The goal was to tarnish our family

Asked how he explained the sanctions to his family, Milorad Dodik’s voice softened. “My family has endured enough through all those years.” He is proud, he said, of the way his children have turned out. “My daughter has four children. Some of my friends told me that my daughter and son had every opportunity to turn out badly because their father was president — but they didn’t. They stayed decent, finished their degrees, and are engaged in serious work.”

Yet he lamented that “the very fact that they are my children” led to what he described as media-driven criminalization.

Then he paused. “Imagine this, in the sanctions against my daughter and son, it actually says: ‘Sanctions are imposed because they supported their father.’ Well, who else should they support if not their father? Unbelievable.”

For Dodik, the sanctions campaign was “more a matter of humiliation.” He recounted how his daughter — locally known for her social media presence — saw her restaurant sanctioned by the Biden administration and her charity, which built housing for families with multiple children, shut down after its bank account was closed. “The goal was to tarnish our family,” Dodik said, adding that mere suspicion of ties to them was enough to shutter businesses and “destroy large companies.”

He cited Prointer as an example: a technology firm with 140 engineers and $80 million in annual turnover, which was forced to close after being linked to his son Igor. “My son had no part in it — we know this — though he had some friends there,” Dodik insisted. The company’s accounts were frozen, its operations banned, and its engineers left jobless “simply because someone said: ‘Oh yes, that’s Igor Dodik, Milorad Dodik’s son.’”

Dodik: I cannot open any account in any bank

Dodik said the Biden driven campaign against him had reached into every corner of his personal life, with U.S. sanctions cutting him and his family off from the basic tools of modern existence — including access to the banking system.

“Me, my wife, my son and daughter, my son-in-law, my daughter-in-law, and all seven of my grandchildren — every bank account has been closed,” Dodik said. “In the banks, we can do nothing. I receive my salary through the post. My pay is paid out in cash at the presidency’s cashier’s office, and the postman brings it to my home.”

Asked under whose authority the accounts were closed in an entity he was the President of, Dodik said former U.S. Ambassador Michael Murphy “threatened” banks with sanctions if they continued to serve him or his relatives.

“I still have no account and cannot open any account in any bank,” he said. “Here, the banks are mostly foreign-owned, and there is only one bank owned by domestic individuals, but it is also private. There is no state-owned bank. They even threatened to take away their SWIFT access.”

The ambassador Dodik referred to is Michael Murphy, a 29-year veteran of the U.S. Foreign Service. According to Dodik, Murphy was previously an assistant to Richard Holbrooke, considered the architect of the Dayton Agreement. “He came here and behaved like a bully,” Dodik says.

“Ambassador Murphy had good connections with Secretary of State Blinken, and they acted like some kind of joint criminal enterprise regarding what was happening here,” Dodik did not hold back.

“Regulations didn’t matter, Constitutions didn’t matter, nothing written mattered. What mattered was guessing the ‘spirit of the law or his personal wishes, who was lobbying him, and at what moment,” said Dodik. Flash forward to Trump second term, Dodik said that he was hopeful that “things will change” under the new administration.

 “We see there is still much of Biden’s legacy left over — Biden still controls OFAC and certain other agencies — and President Trump is still having difficulty establishing full control over all segments of government policy,” he said.”That is understandable, but we are suffering because of it. We want the injustice done to us all this time to be corrected by one fair move from the United States and this administration at its head.”

Dodik noted that “when we hear some people say that court rulings must be respected,” it runs counter to what he describes as Trump’s historic pledge not to interfere in other nations’ affairs.“

He added that “Some from the State Department came to Sarajevo about 20 days ago and encouraged the Muslims, telling them, ‘The U.S. position is that the court’s decision must be respected.’” In his view, that meant accepting the ruling without examining its relevance. “Then immediately after that I received a court ruling unfavorable to me, and immediately this process against me begins.”

Dodik believes that holdovers from the previous administration “continue to operate” and that “Trump is not familiar with the details”

The Schmidt factor and Republika Srpska’s mineral reserves

Republika Srpska President Milorad Dodik has an opinion about why international pressure over property rights transfer from his entity in Bosnia and Herzegovina has intensified in recent years: lithium, gold, and other buried wealth.

A decade-long survey of Republika Srpska’s mineral reserves, he said, concluded in 2021, identifying deposits of magnesium, lithium, boric acid and gold. 

“And then this German arrives and says all property, all assets, should be transferred to Bosnia and Herzegovina. I naturally oppose this,” Dodik said. “In our Constitution — as in the U.S. Constitution — it states that only what is explicitly assigned to Bosnia and Herzegovina belongs to Bosnia and Herzegovina, and everything else belongs to the entities. And among what is explicitly assigned, property is not mentioned.”

For Dodik, the timing was no coincidence. The “German” he referred to is Christian Schmidt, Bosnia’s foreign-appointed High Representative. “The Germans have become too entangled here,” Dodik said, linking Schmidt’s push to transfer ownership of land and assets to the central government directly to the mineral discoveries.

He said efforts to centralize control over property reach back to “the very first day of the Dayton signing” that ended Bosnia’s 1992–95 war. He recalled earlier concessions — like the transfer of armed forces to the central government — as strategic mistakes. “It made absolutely no sense for the three sides, which had been at war until recently, to now create a single army,” Dodik said.

Describing the current push as a political “experiment,” he added: “We are sick of all of it. But as the old adage goes, brute force does not ask God’s permission.”

The State Department’s call for restraint

The State Department, in a recent statement to The Pavlovic Today said that “The United States remains committed to BiH’s stability, sovereignty, and territorial integrity, and calls on all sides to avoid any action to further escalate the situation.”  

Asked to comment on it, Dodik said it was an appeal that came too late.

“What now? If I fight, I’m the one escalating the situation,” he asked, “but those who allowed an individual to impose a law so that Muslims judge Christians — they’re not escalating? They’re not escalating, but I am?”

The statement, he noted, simply read: We call on all sides to avoid escalation. His response was immediate: “Why didn’t they do that a month ago?”

Dodik said he trusted President Trump and believed the U.S. leader can relate to the pressures he faced. “I know that, just as I have scoundrels here, he also has scoundrels and malicious people around him,” Dodik remarked. 

His question was pointed: why issue the statement now and not three months earlier? Why, he asked, hadn’t the State Department followed Trump’s position that there should be no imposition on foreign nations. “If you’re fair, why don’t you say, ‘An individual cannot pass laws’? The United States pays that man, Schmidt, 24,000 euros a month and covers 40 percent of the budget of someone like him,” Dodik said.

Dodik says Schmidt is paid with U.S. taxpayer money to do “dirty work” without approval from the UN Security Council. “He has no consent from the signatories, no consent from Serbia, Croatia, Republika Srpska, or the Federation.”

Sandy Berger vs. Madeleine Albright

In Dodik’s telling, Bosnia’s fate might have been very different had Washington chosen Sandy Berger’s peace plan over Madeleine Albright’s. At the time the United States was crafting solutions for peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Dodik recalled, there were two “equal concepts”— one pushed by NSA Sandy Berger, and the other pushed by Madeleine Albright and her team, including O’Brien and others, which later resulted in the Dayton Agreement. 

“Berger’s proposal — now declassified — was reasonable and rational: that peoples should be divided along natural boundaries, where they belong. That would have been fair, instead of this prolonged torment,” said Dodik as making a verdict on something that has already been done. 

Clinton’s sympathies, Dodik recalled, leaned toward Albright. “We now know, after all these years, that he said: ‘All right, let’s try with this Dayton concept.’ It is never too late for the other concept.”

​​For Dodik, that “other concept” — a Republika Srpska separate but with open borders, free movement of people and goods, and no imposition — was the fairer path. 

“If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work,” he says. “That is exactly what the Dayton Agreement recognized, after all. But things have gone too far. Eighty-six of Republika Srpska’s original Dayton powers have been taken away by decisions of the high representative,” he added.

Dodik maintains that Bosnia’s state-level judiciary was imposed illegitimately, stressing that “the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina does not provide for a Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina or a Prosecutor’s Office.” He said both institutions were created unilaterally by former High Representative Wolfgang Petritsch and justified through the “Bonn Powers,” despite the high representative lacking constitutional authority.

Asked why the Office of the High Representative still claims the power to remove elected leaders three decades after the war, Dodik was blunt: “The Muslims are dissatisfied with Bosnia and Herzegovina because they want a unitary Bosnia and Herzegovina. We are fighting against that unitarization.” By “unitary,” he explained, he meant a Bosnia without Republika Srpska, “based on a civic principle in which Muslims are the majority, and in which they would control all decisions and all bodies that they must elect” — a vision he said is being advanced “through the support of elements of previous U.S. administrations.”

Dodik rejects that vision entirely. “I feel Serbian. Croats feel Croatian. Only the Muslims have changed their national identity several times. First, they went from being Christians to Muslims — which I can perhaps understand, because when the Ottoman Empire was here, life was much easier if you converted to another faith. They remained, for generations, perpetually dissatisfied with that. Then they called themselves ‘muslims’ with a lowercase ‘m,’ then ‘Muslims’ with a capital ‘M,’ and in 1993, during the war in Bosnia, they declared themselves Bosniaks — interested in a unified Bosnian state and a Bosnian nation.”

Looking back, Dodik believes that many from previous U.S. administrations “fell for it — it seemed exotic to them, appealing that they could create something along those lines. And then we were blamed because we did not want to accept it.”

He draws a historical line of resistance. “We didn’t accept the Turks for 500 years, we didn’t accept the Germans the first or second time,” said Dodik. “Here I sit in the place where I live — 40 kilometers from here is Jasenovac. In that Jasenovac camp, the Croatian Ustasha forces killed 500,000 Serbs, 35,000 Jews, and a number of anti-fascists. It was, in essence, a camp for the systematic killing of Serbs.”

Against that historical backdrop, Dodik rejects any idea of changing his national identity. “And now someone expects me, as a member of that epic nation, to say — because of some idea coming from some distant offices — ‘I am not a Serb, I am now a Bosniak.’ No. I remain a Serb. If you are a Serb, and if you do what I do, you can count on being persecuted.”

The persecution, he insists, has been relentless — but rarely successful. According to him, “they just need to have a bit more style. When they were conducting investigations against me, they would say, ‘this crime’ or ‘that crime,’ always inventing something, but they could never find anything. Four international financial investigations were conducted against me, and not one showed that I had any criminal responsibility.”

He claims that despite this, the pressure has continued. “And then I read — the high representative says, ‘you’re going to prison,’ and I didn’t sign anything. They have been trying to eliminate me for the last 10 to 15 years.” He paused. “My mistake was staying in politics too long; I should have left much earlier.”

Albright called Dodik ‘A breath of fresh air‘

When Milorad Dodik rose to power in 1998, he was hailed in Washington as “America’s man,” with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright calling him “a breath of fresh air in the Balkans.” That same year, after winning a parliamentary majority to form a government, he faced resistance from the Serb Democratic Party (SDS), which tried to block his mandate.

“Then certain foreign embassies became involved, believing that a change was needed,” Dodik recalled. He notes that his political career was rooted in wartime experience, having served three and a half years in the Republika Srpska army before being demobilized to sit in parliament.

Dodik recalled that then–Republika Srpska president Biljana Plavšić “offered the post of prime minister to five or six other people” before he accepted the role. “ I built a majority. Since the speaker of the parliament was from the SDS, they constantly obstructed, and then foreign actors intervened. That intervention was interpreted as some kind of assistance to me,” he added.

“I consider myself, then and now, a man of the West — but not of this distorted liberal kind,” he declared.

Dodik noted that Slobodan Milošević opposed his election “because he hadn’t been consulted,” stressing that he was “not someone who was a subordinate or a sympathizer of all that.” While Alija Izetbegović held power in Sarajevo and Franjo Tuđman in Zagreb, Dodik was the only new leader among the region’s four main figures.

“I advocated for a rapid normalization of life, I accepted the Dayton Peace Agreement and the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina right away. I was the first to accept it. Everyone attacked me for treason, but I accepted it as soon as it was signed.”

In those early years, Dodik thought Dayton could work. “However, over the years, the West — led by U.S. administrations and the Brussels administration, which talks about the European path — reformed Dayton to such an extent that it no longer exists. Only shameless people can now say ‘the Dayton Agreement.’ Which Dayton Agreement? Eighty-six powers have been taken from Republika Srpska and transferred to the level of Sarajevo. At that time I believed it was possible, but I quickly saw that it wasn’t. And they soon realized I could not be the person they expected. After two and a half years, I was replaced by another, Mladen Ivanić, who tried and was servile for a few years. So I was left to build my own political path.”

His first major clash with the U.S. administration came in 2001, after he was no longer prime minister. “The then–U.S. ambassador, late Clifford Bond, came to see me eight months after my term had ended and said: ‘I was sent from Washington.’ At that time, this unconstitutional court was being established. He came to my property, where I live, and told me: ‘The United States expects you, Mr. Dodik, to plead guilty.’”

Guilty of what? Dodik laughs. “ After we came out of the war, I noticed ministers always came in the same clothes. I said, ‘Go and buy some.’ One suit cost more than a minister’s monthly salary, so I made a decision in the government to buy each minister two suits so they would look proper and dignified. And then he considered that an abuse of office and opened a criminal case against me that dragged on for four years. In the end, of course, nothing was proven. Ambassador Bond came to me and said, ‘Plead guilty, and we will respect that very much. We’ll arrange for you to be sentenced to six months in prison and two years on probation.’ I told him, ‘Please, Ambassador, leave my property.’”

That was the moment Dodik says he “no longer believed in the objectivity of the U.S. administration.” Attempts to imprison him, he claims, have continued from 2001 through 2025 — ten indictments, all ending in acquittals, though rarely reported.

Dodik: Dayton has been destroyed

​​Nearly three decades after the guns fell silent, the Dayton Peace Agreement remains rare peace treaty that has the constitution inserted in it  as an annex.  Signed in December 1995 at an Ohio air force base, Dayton was designed to freeze a brutal war and bind together its warring factions — the Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs — under a single state. Its 11 annexes spelled out military, political, and constitutional arrangements in intricate detail, creating two entities: the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Republika Srpska.

At the heart of the deal was Annex 4, the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Unlike most constitutions, it was not born of a domestic drafting process but written by American lawyers as part of the peace accord itself. 

“American lawyers drafted the Dayton Peace Agreement and wrote the constitution — Annex 4 — as a copy of the U.S. Constitution, with an identical structure for organizing the state itself. They knew in Dayton that such a constitution would never be adopted — that the sides could not be reconciled — and so they decided to impose it in the form of an annex, requiring the parties to later adopt it. Republika Srpska adopted the Dayton Agreement through its parliament, while the Muslims never did. They insist that it is a ‘straitjacket’ for them, while for us it is supposed to serve as a punishment.”

For Dodik, that asymmetry is at the heart of today’s crisis. “That’s why I believe they chose to put it in an annex — because to this day we cannot agree. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, nothing can be agreed upon between the peoples and the sides. That is an illusion. So the State Department statement is also an illusion. ‘Call on the sides’… Which sides? One side has used an imposed court to eliminate the other side — me, as president of Republika Srpska. That means Dayton has been destroyed.”

He points to a 2007–2008 episode as further proof of outside pressure: his contract with Quinn Gillespie & Associates, a bipartisan U.S. lobbying firm.

 The firm was led by Jack Quinn, a former head of the Democratic caucus, and Ed Gillespie, former RNC chairman and White House communications director under George W. Bush. After only three months, Dodik recalled, Quinn arrived unexpectedly with a list of “10 companies from Arab and Islamic countries with which they had contracts worth over one billion dollars.” Those companies warned they would pull out if the firm continued working with Republika Srpska. “It seemed more logical for me to cancel my contract — worth about 20 million, which was enormous money for us — than for him to lose contracts worth a billion,” Dodik said, adding that he was later attacked for the decision and even faced an attempt at prosecution.

Looking at the present, Dodik argues that “no one today can offer us either historical or acquired conditions or facts by which Bosnia and Herzegovina should remain unified — just because there’s a will for it in some big office. Is that it? It doesn’t work that way. Everything here is measured. Bosnia and Herzegovina is a completely divided society. There is nothing in common except the compulsion imposed by the international factor at the decision-making level,” said Dodik. “They decided to impose all functions at the level of Bosnia and Herzegovina from that position, instilling fear in me as the most important figure in Republika Srpska: ‘There is the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina; if you don’t behave as expected, you will go to court.’ If they can sentence the president, what does that mean for an ordinary person here?”

A flashback to 2011

When I first interviewed Milorad Dodik in 2011, Catherine Ashton — then the EU’s High Representative — came in for a historic meeting in Republika Srpska. Even now, more than a decade later, he looks at that visit with the hindsight of a man who believes he saw the ending long before the story finished.

“She came at that time because of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which had been imposed outside the Constitution,” he recalled. “We protested. I think we made a mistake by not going all the way. Over all these years, it’s become clear it was a complete fraud — nothing from that joint statement, nothing from what was supposed to be the basis for judicial reform, has happened to this day.”

In Dodik’s view, the court has not reformed; it has hardened. “It’s become even more of a Muslim, unitarist court,” he said, “and now it’s used for political score-settling. The very idea that someone has been convicted in court is hard to defend against, but no one looks into the substance of the court itself — especially the fact that its laws were changed by an individual who was not appointed in accordance with Annex 10 of the Dayton Peace Agreement. Annex 10 says the high representative is appointed not by the ‘international community’ but by the signatory parties — and the signatory party to Annex 10 is Republika Srpska, which I represent.”

Neither Serbia nor Croatia — nor, of course, the Federation, the other half of Bosnia and Herzegovina — was consulted. And when the matter went before the UN Security Council, Russia and China refused to vote for the appointment. “He couldn’t get through,” Dodik said. “And yet, regardless of that, Schmidt turns up here as a ‘private individual’ and starts working. Of course, behind him stood the Biden administration and the EU — and he began behaving, literally, like a bull in a china shop.”

According to Dodik, Schmidt has at times simply overridden the constitutional order. “He says: ‘We are suspending the Constitution for 24 hours’ so that a government can be formed. Or he punishes political parties — my party and others as well. The high representative intervenes in the budget.”

Even back in 2011, Dodik had told me that Republika Srpska “must never give up on a referendum, even on minimal issues.” That conviction has not softened. “An excellent statement,” he said now, “and it wasn’t just for that moment. It was easier back then — we had promises of reform. Catherine Ashton promised to fix the deviations. That court, which is unconstitutional, was sentencing Serbs under new laws passed here, introducing life imprisonment, while Muslims were being tried under laws from the former Yugoslavia still in effect in their territory. This caused a lot of problems here.”

For him, this is why the referendum now on the table is not yet about independence.
“That is why we are not going straight to a referendum on independence,” he explained, “but to a referendum where the people can say: ‘Excuse me, you cannot do this.’ That will give me political strength, and it means rejecting the possibility of holding extraordinary elections based on a decision by the Central Election Commission, because it is not competent for that.”

The referendum card

The word “ referendum” hangs over Bosnia’s political landscape. Dodik has called for one, promising to accept the results as “the will of the people.” The question, he says, will be whether to “agree to the demolition of the Constitution of the Republic of Srpska.”

“You have announced a referendum,” I said to him. “If the people vote in favor, what happens in that case, and are you prepared to declare independence?”

“Some of my friends say we would never become an independent state if what’s happening to me now weren’t happening. But with these events and my problems, it could be a real opportunity,” he replied. “ I definitely believe these 30 years show that Bosnia cannot work — and that it should dissolve.”

He insists — and insists again — that he does not seek violence. “The Muslims threaten violence — but I ask you, where in the world do they not threaten violence? I’m not threatening violence. I want to hold a referendum and let the people decide. To say, ‘I do not want to live under a protectorate. We want to live our own independent life.’ And what’s problematic about that? Then the Muslims say, ‘We are against you leaving,’ while doing everything to make our lives miserable. By what logic is that? There has never been a president of the republic here who hasn’t been legally persecuted — simply because he was the president of the republic.”

​​Putin’s role — what Moscow says (and doesn’t)

From there, the conversation shifted outward — to Moscow, and whether Russia might step in based on what happens on referendum. 

“The biggest mess here was created by the previous U.S. administration, and we expect it to be corrected from that side. Biden’s narrative, and that of his people, was all about ‘the Russians’ and so on.”

He recounted his meetings with the Russian president — many of them, over many years.

“Putin has never told me that he supports my entering into a separation process or doing anything that would threaten stability,” said Dodik. ”President Putin  has viewed Russia as a witness to the Dayton Peace Agreement, and we remain committed to that. There have been many deviations, but we are trying to address them,” shared Dodik. “Putin has never publicly given me any support for anything. At times, I’ve even been a little disappointed because of that.”

Enter Viktor Orbán

Orbán has publicly come to Dodik’s defense. But how does Dodik see his role — and that of Donald Trump — in resolving the situation he is in?

“I would like President Trump to at least take a moment to become familiar with this case,” Dodik said.

“I regret that it turns out Trump’s people are suffering here in the region. I supported President Trump throughout his four-year term — and during Biden’s term — and whenever I made a stronger statement, they would simply increase the sanctions against me.”

He leaned forward, almost impatient to clarify.

“I’m not asking Trump to intervene because of that. I’m asking him to intervene because of the injustice that has been done here — because it is unacceptable for one individual to make laws and for me, as a Christian, to be convicted by Muslims,” he said. “Someone needs to see and say that this Bosnia and Herzegovina — after 30 years of the largest international governance operation, militarily, economically, and financially — has failed to establish itself as a state. Remove that monster — it simply cannot work.”

Orbán, he says, is cut from a different cloth.“Orbán is a man who, from Trump’s first term, took the lead in Trump’s policies, believing that Hungary should not surrender to the neoliberal globalists. As a strong leader and powerful president, he opposed them and, of course, drew the entire Brussels swamp against himself.”

When asked what Orbán specifically said to him, Dodik allowed a faint smile. “Orbán supports me. He believes, of course, that this is an injustice — that they are targeting everyone who cares about law and order. And that we must continue to fight, use the instruments available to us, and, politically, we must not yield — we must stand together,” he revealed. “Orbán, myself, and a few others here in the region — we are, if I may say so, the direct promoters of Trump’s policies.”

That loyalty, Dodik believes, is why he is paying the price.

Dodik: Why should Palestine be recognized if it’s clear that Hamas has not returned the hostages?

The night of October 7 was still fresh in the world’s mind when Republika Srpska’s Presidency building lit up in blue and white. It was not a bureaucratic decision taken after long debate — it was, as Dodik recalls, instinctive.

“That was right at the beginning, immediately after the terrorist attack on October 7,” he says. “We sent a sign of support to the Israeli people. One evening, we lit the Presidency building in the colors of the Israeli flag.”

In Sarajevo, it went the other way. Palestinian flags. Hamas banners. “So we were divided there,” he said matter-of-factly. “But that division didn’t start then.”

The paradox cracked wide open— the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, politically aligned with Washington, throwing its weight behind Palestine, while Washington itself remains one of Israel’s most steadfast allies.

“It’s an incredible story,” Dodik said, shaking his head. “One can’t understand what it’s about.”

For him, this is not just geopolitics; it is biography. The shape of his worldview was set decades ago, carved by two parallel tragedies — Jewish and Serbian suffering in the 20th century.

“During my life, I was shaped by the stories and lessons about the shared suffering of Jews and Serbs. The Jewish suffering in World War II was enormous, but proportionally, the Serbian suffering was just as great. We were killed in the same ways — in the Jasenovac camp, in Mauthausen, and in many others. All our ancestors were killed there. From that time, out of that emotion, I’ve always had a positive view of Israel,” he said. 

His break with Yugoslavia’s foreign policy began young. As a student he opposed the then-policy of Yugoslavia, which upheld the Non-Aligned Movement, supported Arab and Islamic countries, and criticized Israel. “Even then, at public gatherings, I was known for my position that we should cooperate with the Jews,” reflected Dodik. 

The affinity deepened when he took office in 1998. As prime minister, he met a man whose life was an emblem of that shared history — a Jew from Novi Sad, once a partisan commissar during World War II, who had fallen out with Tito’s policies, spent years in Sremska Mitrovica prison, and eventually emigrated to Israel, where he became director of the National Film Institute.

“During the NATO bombing, he came here out of some impulse, and we began to socialize,” Dodik recalls. He was much older, but pleasant company, and close to then–Prime Minister Barak in Israel. Through that friendship, doors opened in Jerusalem that led Dodik to meet  Shimon Peres who was still alive at the time. “I saw that our positions were very similar — the environment around Israel and the environment around us. Excluding Serbia, it was identical: historic enmity between Serbs and Croats, historic enmity between Muslims and Serbs.”

That connection would be tested in 2008, when Bosnia and Herzegovina — then a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council — was asked to vote on recognizing Palestine as a state, on terms that Dodik says were “based on the Palestinian concept.” By that time, he had developed close relations with Israel’s Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman.

Bosnia and Herzegovina held the tie-breaking vote in the Security Council, where the count stood at 7–7.” For Bosnia and Herzegovina to vote in favor of Palestine, my consent was required. I said no, and Bosnia and Herzegovina abstained, which meant the UN Security Council did not adopt the decision to form Palestine under a concept unfavorable to Israel.”

It is a moment Dodik still speaks of without hesitation — as if, for him, the choice had been clear long before the vote was ever called.

Dodik: If UK and France cack Palestinian statehood, why not Republika Srpska?

In September this year at UNGA, France and the UK may decide to recognize Palestine. To Dodik, it is regression. “Recognizing a future Palestine without Israel’s consent is wrong and will generate new divisions and centuries-old conflicts,” he says. “Israel has not been against two states, but there have been problems over territory. Israel has the right to push its own concept, which unfortunately France — under Macron — and Britain now suddenly support Palestine, forgetting their previous positions.”

He recalls the days immediately after the October 7 attacks. “I was supposed to go to Israel shortly after the terrorist attack. We had agreed on a date, but it was canceled because Macron suddenly announced his visit for that day. The Israelis asked me to postpone for a few days. Macron came, strutted around, expressed solidarity with Israel over the terrorist attack, the murdered children, and so on. Two days later, Biden came. After that, no international representative could visit because the bombing began, and so I never managed to go. But there was Macron, who at that time strongly supported Israel, and now he says he wants to recognize Palestine.”

The hypocrisy, as he sees it, is stark. “Why should Palestine be recognized if it’s clear that Hamas has not returned the hostages? I was in Kibbutz Be’eri in Israel, which was attacked in that terrorist assault, and I spoke with people there — including the only man who lost both his son and wife in the attack. He told me, ‘They attacked us — the same people who worked alongside us in the fields. They knew where we lived, where we worked, they entered our homes.”

Dodik says he supports the current U.S. approach. “I believe U.S. policy on this is correct, and that it should be resolved in a way that doesn’t end up like Bosnia and Herzegovina — stuck in a vacuum where nothing has ever worked,” he noted. “ It must be a permanent solution, whatever that may be. In that sense, I prefer that Israel has the right to exist, to live, and to be secure. Gaza, before the terrorist attack, had two million people in a small area — but many don’t want to hear that Israel supplied that enclave with electricity and water. And water is a strategic resource. And then you get that attack.”

He paused, as if still replaying what he saw. “I also visited the site of the concert where they stormed in. It’s horrific to see — young people who were killed.”

Then he pivoted to Republika Srpska. “If France and the UK believe Palestine should be a state, then I can ask — why didn’t you say that Republika Srpska could become a state? It would be more logical for us to be a state,” he said. “We have all the prerequisites to be a state — except a seat at the UN.”