US lifts sanctions on Bosnian Serb leader Dodik following resignation

The United States removed Bosnian Serb nationalist leader Milorad Dodik and 47 individuals and companies connected to him from its sanctions list on Wednesday, following his resignation as president of Republika Srpska and the annulment of separatist laws that had threatened Bosnia’s territorial integrity.

Dodik, who was first sanctioned by the US in 2017 for flouting the Dayton peace treaty that ended Bosnia’s 1990s ethnic war, stepped down as president of Republika Srpska on 18 October, after a state court banned him from politics and sentenced him to one year in prison with a six-year ban on holding office for defying decisions of the High Representative, Bosnia’s international overseer.

Those delisted by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (‘OFAC’) include Zeljka Cvijanovic, the Serb member of Bosnia’s tripartite presidency and one of Dodik’s closest associates; Republika Srpska assembly speaker Nenad Stevandic; Dodik’s adult children Igor and Gorica; and more than a dozen companies including television channels ATV, Kaldera and Una TV, as well as companies Agape, Prointer and Infinity Group.

OFAC did not explain the mass delistings, but the action follows Dodik’s resignation. Earlier this month, OFAC delisted four other Republika Srpska officials from its sanctions list, following the Election Commission’s termination of Dodik’s mandate as RS president.

‘The decision to lift the sanctions is not only a legal but also a moral rehabilitation of the truth about Republika Srpska and all those who honourably serve it,’ Dodik said in a statement on X. 

On 18 October, Bosnian Serb lawmakers appointed Ana Trisic Babic as acting president of Republika Srpska until elections for a new president are held 23 November, acknowledging officially for the first time that Dodik was stepping aside after the state court banned him from politics.

The Dayton Peace Agreement, brokered by the United States in 1995, established Bosnia and Herzegovina as a multi-ethnic state divided into two entities – the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Republika Srpska – connected by a weak central government.