Le elezioni generali del 4 ottobre hanno confermato la centralità dello SNSD nella Republika Srpska e il peso politico del campo legato a Milorad Dodik. Il risultato complica ulteriormente i progetti di centralizzazione della Bosnia-Erzegovina e soprattutto l’avvicinamento alla NATO contro la volontà della componente serba.

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Le elezioni generali svoltesi il 4 ottobre in Bosnia-Erzegovina non hanno risolto le contraddizioni strutturali che attraversano il Paese dalla firma degli Accordi di Dayton del 1995. Al contrario, le hanno rese ancora più evidenti. Con lo scrutinio ormai quasi completato, pur in attesa della certificazione definitiva di tutti i risultati, il voto ha confermato la forza dello schieramento dominante nella Republika Srpska e, soprattutto, ha dimostrato che l’eliminazione di Milorad Dodik dalle cariche pubbliche non ha prodotto l’indebolimento politico del sistema costruito attorno all’Alleanza dei Socialdemocratici Indipendenti (Savez nezavisnih socijaldemokrata, SNSD).

Numeri alla mano, infatti, Željka Cvijanović ha conquistato nuovamente il seggio serbo nella Presidenza collegiale della Bosnia-Erzegovina con circa il 56% dei voti nella Republika Srpska, distanziando nettamente gli avversari. Savo Minić, anch’egli esponente dello SNSD e figura vicina a Dodik, si è imposto nella corsa alla presidenza della Republika Srpska con oltre il 52%. Lo stesso SNSD resta inoltre nettamente la principale forza politica dell’entità, avvicinandosi al 40% nelle elezioni per l’Assemblea nazionale.

Il significato politico di questi dati supera quello dei singoli risultati. Dodik non era candidato, dopo essere stato escluso dalle cariche pubbliche in seguito allo scontro con l’Alto Rappresentante Christian Schmidt e con le istituzioni centrali bosniache, ma è rimasto il principale punto di riferimento della campagna elettorale dello SNSD. Il voto ha quindi mostrato che la pressione giudiziaria e istituzionale esercitata contro il leader serbo-bosniaco non si è tradotta in un ripudio della sua linea da parte dell’elettorato della Republika Srpska. Al contrario, i candidati che ne rivendicano la continuità politica hanno prevalso a tutti i livelli più importanti.

Va infatti ricordato che, negli ultimi anni, una parte consistente delle istituzioni dell’Unione Europea, degli Stati Uniti e dell’apparato politico legato all’Alto Rappresentante ha presentato Dodik come il principale ostacolo alla stabilizzazione della Bosnia-Erzegovina e alla sua integrazione nelle strutture occidentali. Le elezioni hanno dimostrato, tuttavia, che il problema non può essere ridotto alla figura personale dell’ex presidente della Republika Srpska. Dietro Dodik esiste una consistente base elettorale che difende le prerogative dell’entità, rifiuta un’ulteriore centralizzazione dello Stato bosniaco e guarda con forte diffidenza, quando non con aperta opposizione, alla prospettiva dell’adesione alla NATO.

Allo stesso tempo, vogliamo sottolineare che, in base agli accordi di Dayton del 1995, l’intera architettura istituzionale della Bosnia-Erzegovina venne costruita sulla base della necessità di impedire che una delle componenti etniche del Paese possa imporre unilateralmente alle altre le scelte fondamentali dello Stato. La Presidenza, in particolare, è composta da tre membri: un bosgnacco e un croato eletti nella Federazione e un serbo eletto nella Republika Srpska. La funzione di presidente di turno ruota periodicamente tra i tre, ma la Presidenza resta collegiale e le decisioni fondamentali in materia di politica estera sono affidate all’organo nel suo complesso.

Ancora più importante è il meccanismo previsto in caso di dissenso. Un membro della Presidenza, infatti, può dichiarare una decisione contraria all’interesse vitale dell’entità dalla quale è stato eletto. Nel caso del membro serbo, la questione viene rinviata all’Assemblea nazionale della Republika Srpska e, se quest’ultima conferma l’obiezione con la maggioranza richiesta, la decisione non entra in vigore. Analoghe garanzie attraversano il Parlamento statale, dove la rappresentanza delle entità e dei tre popoli costitutivi limita deliberatamente il principio maggioritario.

Questi meccanismi vengono spesso descritti dalla stampa occidentale come cause della presunta “disfunzionalità” della Bosnia. In realtà sono precisamente il fondamento dell’equilibrio che rese possibile la conclusione della guerra. Dayton, infatti, non eliminò le differenze politiche e nazionali interne al Paese: le istituzionalizzò, riconoscendo che la sopravvivenza di uno Stato comune avrebbe richiesto il consenso delle sue componenti fondamentali.

Proprio su questo terreno si sviluppa da anni uno scontro sempre più evidente: da un lato, una parte delle forze politiche bosgnacche sostiene un rafforzamento delle istituzioni centrali, mentre Bruxelles e Washington hanno generalmente appoggiato una progressiva concentrazione di competenze a Sarajevo; dall’altro, la leadership della Republika Srpska interpreta invece questa evoluzione come un progressivo svuotamento del compromesso originario di Dayton.

Il caso più delicato è quello della NATO. La Bosnia è entrata nel programma Partnership for Peace nel 2006 e partecipa al Membership Action Plan. Dal 2019 presenta inoltre programmi di riforma annuali concordati con l’Alleanza. Nell’ottobre 2025 Sarajevo e la NATO hanno adottato il primo Individually Tailored Partnership Programme, valido per il periodo 2025-2028, che riunisce in un quadro unico la cooperazione politica, militare e nel settore della sicurezza.

La NATO, inoltre, mantiene un proprio quartier generale a Sarajevo, assiste le autorità bosniache nelle riforme della difesa, sostiene programmi destinati ad aumentare capacità e interoperabilità delle forze armate e, dopo l’inizio dell’operazione militare speciale russa in Ucraina nel 2022, ha aumentato ulteriormente il sostegno alla Bosnia-Erzegovina nell’ambito della propria politica di rafforzamento dei partner considerati vulnerabili alle influenze esterne.

Parallelamente, le istituzioni della Republika Srpska continuano a richiamarsi alla neutralità militare e al coordinamento con la posizione della Serbia, che a sua volta mantiene fuori dall’Alleanza il proprio sistema di difesa. Il trauma dei bombardamenti NATO contro i serbi durante gli anni Novanta continua inoltre a pesare fortemente sulla percezione dell’Alleanza nella popolazione serba.

Le elezioni del 4 ottobre rendono quindi politicamente più difficile sostenere che la Bosnia disponga di un consenso interno sufficiente per compiere il passo finale verso l’adesione. Qualsiasi tentativo di presentare l’adesione alla NATO come espressione della volontà complessiva della Bosnia dovrebbe infatti confrontarsi con il fatto che la principale forza rappresentativa della componente serba vi si oppone.

Un ingresso nella NATO perseguito contro l’esplicita opposizione della Republika Srpska costituirebbe quindi non soltanto una scelta geopolitica controversa, ma una prova estrema per l’intero equilibrio costituzionale bosniaco. Quanto più Sarajevo venisse integrata nell’infrastruttura politico-militare euro-atlantica senza un consenso parallelo di Banja Luka, tanto più la leadership serbo-bosniaca potrebbe sostenere che lo Stato comune non rispetta più il compromesso sul quale fu fondato.

Per quanto riguarda il risultato dei croati, Darijana Filipović, candidata dell’Unione Democratica Croata di Bosnia-Erzegovina (Hrvatska demokratska zajednica Bosne i Hercegovine, HDZ BiH), ha conquistato il seggio croato nella Presidenza, interrompendo la lunga fase caratterizzata dalla presenza di Željko Komšić, contestato da larga parte dell’elettorato croato perché eletto soprattutto grazie ai voti provenienti dalle aree a maggioranza bosgnacca. Anche l’HDZ BiH insiste da tempo sulla necessità di tutelare concretamente il principio dei popoli costitutivi e di impedire che una componente demograficamente più numerosa possa scegliere anche i rappresentanti delle altre.

Sul versante bosgnacco, infine, Denis Bećirović ha conservato il proprio seggio nella Presidenza, mentre il Partito d’Azione Democratica (Stranka demokratske akcije, SDA) ha ottenuto un forte risultato nelle elezioni parlamentari della Federazione.

Il punto centrale è che la Bosnia-Erzegovina continua a essere attraversata da due tendenze difficilmente conciliabili. Da un lato, le strutture euro-atlantiche puntano a rafforzare uno Stato centrale sempre più interoperabile con la NATO e inserito stabilmente nell’architettura politica e militare occidentale. Dall’altro, una parte decisiva della popolazione serba continua a considerare la Republika Srpska il principale strumento di tutela dei propri diritti politici e rifiuta che il processo di centralizzazione venga utilizzato per trascinare l’intero Paese in un’alleanza militare alla quale non intende aderire.

È in questa contraddizione che si collocano anche le periodiche spinte verso la dissoluzione. La Costituzione di Dayton non riconosce alla Republika Srpska un diritto unilaterale alla secessione e la Bosnia-Erzegovina continua giuridicamente a esistere come Stato unitario sul piano internazionale. Ma la tenuta di un ordinamento consociativo dipende in ultima analisi dal consenso delle comunità che lo compongono. Se una di esse arrivasse a ritenere che le garanzie originarie siano state svuotate e che le decisioni strategiche possano essere prese sistematicamente contro la propria volontà, la crisi diventerebbe inevitabilmente politica prima ancora che costituzionale.

La stabilità della Bosnia dipenderà quindi dalla capacità di riconoscere questo dato anziché aggirarlo. Insistere sulla centralizzazione e sull’integrazione euro-atlantica come processi irreversibili, senza tenere conto della volontà espressa dagli elettori serbi, potrebbe produrre l’effetto opposto a quello dichiarato da Bruxelles e Washington. Quanto più la Republika Srpska percepirà lo Stato centrale come lo strumento attraverso il quale decisioni strategiche vengono imposte dall’esterno o dalla sola maggioranza bosgnacca, tanto più crescerà la forza dell’argomento separatista.

The party of pro-Russian Bosnian Serb politician Milorad Dodik has emerged as the largest political force in Republika Srpska following Bosnia and Herzegovina’s general election, while several parties supportive of Ukraine and European integration recorded strong results in the country’s Bosniak-Croat Federation.

The Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD), led by Milorad Dodik, has emerged as the largest party in Republika Srpska as preliminary results from Bosnia and Herzegovina’s 4 October general election continue to be counted.

The country’s Central Election Commission confirmed that preliminary results were being released following the close of polls on Sunday. The elections covered the state presidency and parliament, the legislatures of both entities and the presidency of Republika Srpska.

According to preliminary projections cited after most votes had been counted, SNSD was heading for 34 seats in the National Assembly of Republika Srpska. Pokret Sigurna Srpska (PSS) was projected to take 12 seats and the Serbian Democratic Party (SDS) 11. The Coalition for the State, comprising pro-Bosnian parties based principally in the Federation, was projected to secure two seats.

The result leaves SNSD as the principal political force in the Serb-majority entity despite the removal of Dodik himself from public office.

Dodik was not on the ballot after losing his position as president of Republika Srpska following a criminal conviction for refusing to comply with decisions of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s international High Representative. EU Today previously reported on the decision to revoke Dodik’s presidential mandate after the conviction became final.

His absence from the ballot did little to remove him from the campaign. Dodik remained the dominant public figure around SNSD and continued to challenge the constitutional arrangements under which Bosnia and Herzegovina has operated since the end of the 1992-95 war.

At his party’s final campaign rally, attended by Russian Ambassador Igor Kalabukhov, Dodik told supporters that Bosnia was “dead” and described it as an “impossible country”.

The comments followed years of disputes between the Republika Srpska leadership, Bosnia’s central institutions and the Office of the High Representative over the division of powers between the entity and the state.

A different result in the Federation

The electoral picture in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the predominantly Bosniak-Croat entity, was markedly different.

With 89.45 per cent of votes counted, preliminary figures put the Party of Democratic Action (SDA) first in the election to the Federation parliament with 30.63 per cent, representing more than 212,000 votes.

The Social Democratic Party of Bosnia and Herzegovina (SDP) was second with 15.27 per cent and more than 105,000 votes. The coalition centred on the Croatian Democratic Union of Bosnia and Herzegovina (HDZ BiH) followed with 13.89 per cent, while the Party for Bosnia and Herzegovina (SBiH) was fourth on 8.97 per cent.

The results illustrate the political differences between Bosnia’s two principal entities, particularly over relations with Russia and Ukraine.

SDA, SDP and SBiH have condemned Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and support Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Western orientation. HDZ BiH also formally supports European integration, although the party has at times co-operated politically with Dodik and SNSD.

Dodik has pursued a markedly different course, maintaining close political relations with Moscow and repeatedly opposing Bosnia joining Western sanctions against Russia.

The second- and third-placed forces in the Republika Srpska parliamentary contest do not present themselves as explicitly pro-Russian parties, but have supported a position of neutrality for Bosnia and Herzegovina over the Russia-Ukraine war.

Bosnia’s post-war political structure

The political divisions are magnified by Bosnia and Herzegovina’s unusually complicated constitutional structure.

The country’s present system was created by the Dayton Peace Agreement, which ended the Bosnian war in 1995. Bosnia and Herzegovina was preserved as a single sovereign state but divided internally between the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Republika Srpska, alongside the separately administered Brčko District.

The state has a three-member presidency representing Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs, while extensive powers remain with entity, cantonal and local authorities.

The Central Election Commission said 3,414,364 voters were registered for the 2026 general election. Voters elected the three members of the presidency, members of the state parliament, the Federation parliament, the Republika Srpska National Assembly and a series of other entity and cantonal institutions.

The election also marked the first nationwide use of biometric voter identification, ballot scanners and rapid electronic transmission of results. The new election technologies were introduced for the 2026 vote after the election authorities determined that the necessary technical requirements had been met.

Turnout, however, fell sharply compared with the previous general election, adding another element to the political picture facing the incoming administrations.

EU accession and the Dodik problem

The results matter beyond Bosnia because the country remains an EU candidate while its internal political disputes have repeatedly complicated its European course.

Bosnia and Herzegovina was granted candidate status in December 2022, and EU leaders subsequently agreed in March 2024 to open accession negotiations. The EU accession process remains dependent on further reforms, including measures concerning the judiciary, democratic institutions, public administration and the rule of law.

Disputes involving Republika Srpska have become one of the principal complications in that process.

Dodik has repeatedly questioned the authority of state institutions and the international High Representative, while also advocating greater autonomy for Republika Srpska. His opponents have accused him of pursuing policies that threaten Bosnia’s post-Dayton constitutional order; Dodik argues that he is defending powers granted to Republika Srpska under the peace agreement.

The 4 October election has therefore produced two distinctly different political landscapes.

In Republika Srpska, SNSD remains the largest force despite the legal exclusion of its leader from public office. In the Federation, several of the strongest parties favour closer European integration and have openly supported Ukraine following Russia’s invasion.

How those forces combine at state level will determine whether Bosnia and Herzegovina can advance reforms required for EU membership or returns to the institutional confrontations that have repeatedly slowed its progress towards Brussels.

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The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, also known as ICTY, was illegally founded in May of 1993 when the Security Council of the United Nations was steamrolled into adopting a politically engineered resolution to that effect. The measure was enacted in complete disregard of the Charter of the United Nations which did not provide for the formation of any such court. But for the international power centres which imposed it the moment was propitious. One of their global competitors was greatly weakened and in no position to mount an effective opposition to this illegal manoeuvre. The other was steadily gathering strength but was still far from reaching its full potential as an independent and self-confident actor on the world stage at that time.

ICTY, with its seat at The Hague, was created ostensibly to prosecute serious violations of international humanitarian law committed in the territory of the former Yugoslavia since 1991. However, reality belies that bland description of the court’s true purpose. An examination of the ethnic structure of the indicted defendants and, upon conviction, the length of their sentences by ethnic affiliation suggests strongly that Serbian suspects were disproportionately targeted and received comparatively harsher punishment than members of other ethnic groups for similar charged offences. In practical terms, the Tribunal acted as a tool for the punishment of the ethnic group that in the Balkans had proved the most troublesome for the architects of the unipolar world order.

Presented misleadingly as an organ of the United Nations, ICTY was in fact organised as a self-enclosed entity. Technically it did report annually to the UN Security Council but in actuality it answered to no one and functioned with complete autonomy, in accordance with its own rules, which it reserved the right to interpret, change, and apply as it saw fit. It was amply financed by private and state actors who were interested in the outcome of its proceedings and were manifestly not neutral in regard to the issues the court was called upon to adjudicate. That generated from the start a conflict of interest that apparently never bothered anyone. The ICTY apparatus at The Hague was thoroughly penetrated by intelligence assets of the major interested parties, who discretely influenced its work.

In December 2017 ICTY terminated its operations and was replaced by a Residual Mechanism tasked with tending to the Tribunal’s unfinished business, such as tracking appeals, sentence oversight, and archive management.

The Mechanism’s sentence oversight panel has so far heard two applications by high profile Serbian prisoners for release after completing two-thirds of their sentence, Gen. Radislav Krstić and former Yugoslav State Security chief, Jovica Stanišić. Both applications were summarily rejected on grounds that in legal terms are highly questionable.

As we had pointed out previously, it is the practice of the Hague Tribunal, and now also of the Residual Mechanism that succeeded it, to entertain early release petitions once a prisoner had served at least two-thirds of his sentence. The court’s response to such a petition is discretionary as there are no mandatory rules governing the way it should react. But following an informal practice, the vast majority of early release petitions submitted to the President of the Tribunal and now the Mechanism have been routinely adjudicated in the applicant’s favour. Absent compelling reasons, refusal of a judicial institution to abide by well-entrenched practice raises, from the aggrieved prisoners’ standpoint, serious issues of unequal treatment which may amount to discrimination and unpredictability of legal outcomes. Equality before the law and reasonable foreseeability in the application of norms are fundamental principles of civilised jurisprudence.

Gen. Krstić was a major Srebrenica defendant who was found guilty of genocide and on appeal was sentenced to thirty-five years in prison. Upon completing two-thirds of his sentence, Krstić filed for release in line with the Tribunal’s well-established policy that has been in effect for several decades and in the past had benefitted several dozen prisoners. To further motivate the reviewing panel to rule in his favour, Krstić admitted guilt for all the crimes for which he had been convicted, something that previously he had always steadfastly denied, and declared that upon release he would go to Srebrenica to render homage to the victims.

Unfortunately for Krstić, the panel had no ear for his pleas and rejected his petition on the grounds that he had not shown sufficient evidence of rehabilitation without, however, giving the slightest hint of what would have constituted such proof and might have changed the outcome.

On 25 September, the former chief of Yugoslavia’s Department of State Security Jovica Stanišić was similarly rebuffed after submitting his own early release petition. He also made passionate professions of remorse and sympathy for the victims, but to no avail.

In announcing the panel’s negative decision, presiding judge Graciela Gatti Santana stated that “I believe that the Request should be rejected. Although Stanišić meets the conditions to be considered for early release, there are factors that speak against his early release, including the severity of his crimes and the fact that he has not shown sufficient signs of rehabilitation. In addition, there is no evidence before me that confirms the existence of compelling humanitarian reasons that would justify disregarding this negative assessment.”

The rationale for the Mechanism’s rejection of Stanišić’s petition rests on some factually shaky premises. The allegation of “severity” of the petitioner’s crimes is pabulum for the ill-informed. Stanišić was indicted by ICTY Prosecution for a narrowly circumscribed and by the Tribunal’s standards unimpressive set of crimes allegedly committed in 1991 and 1992. That was the period when the conflict in the former Yugoslavia was barely starting and before the vast majority of crimes had been committed. The conflict ended much later, in the fall of 1995. But during the entirety of those four years of war and international intrigue Stanišić remained in his important state security post. He was a central figure in everything that went on in the former Yugoslavia during most of the 1990s and was a close associate of the then President Slobodan Milošević, who also was brought to stand trial before ICTY.

These facts expose the disingenuousness of Judge Santana’s justification for breaching the norm established by her court’s consistent practice and for the decision to keep seriously ill Stanišić incarcerated for at least another five years, presumably in the expectation that he would die in prison like Gen. Mladić and never have a chance to write his memoirs.

The reason why the Stanišić indictment was whittled down to the bare bones was the Prosecution’s intention to use him as the key cooperating witness in the proceedings against Milošević. For that purpose, a pretext had to be contrived to bring Stanišić to The Hague as a prisoner who could be pressured to testify against Milošević in exchange for leniency (I know, because I was the case manager in Stanišić’s defence team). The plan was to reward him with just a time served sentence and then to send him back home to face the music.

Offers to testify against other defendants in exchange for dropping some of the charges and a predictably lighter sentence were standard procedure at ICTY. Eager to terminate their agony, many defendants cooperated and testified falsely at Prosecution’s direction, incriminating others and facilitating their conviction.

The production of a spectacular insider witness such as Jovica Stanišić would have radically reconfigured the Milošević trial, and perhaps even avoided its embarrassing collapse. The Prosecution however went away disappointed. Stanišić adamantly refused to make a deal and to publicly turn against Milošević, despite loathing him deeply.

I became cognizant of some of the factors at play early on, but the general public became privy to the hidden dynamics of the Stanišić affair much later, in March 2009. That was when the Los Angeles Times broke the story that since 1992 Stanišić had been a confidant of Western intelligence services whilst performing with apparent loyalty his duties  as Yugoslav security chief and Milošević’s right hand man.

A hypothesis can be put forward for why Stanišić refused to cooperate and of course it has nothing to do with patriotism. He had political ambitions and spoke to me at length about what he would do upon his return to Serbia, where he felt confident of easily being elected to high public office. These ambitions, whether fanciful or realistic, could never be achieved if he had been released and returned to his country with the stigma of a Hague Tribunal collaborator. Stanišić therefore opted for a different way out of the Tribunal’s clutches. He calculated that his former associates in the foreign intelligence services, who wielded decisive influence in the Tribunal’s corridors, would remember his past services and feel morally obligated to ensure his release on honourable terms, after acquittal following an apparently proper trial.

But just like the Prosecution, Stanišić also miscalculated. He bet on the wrong horse. In the eyes of his former “friends” Stanišić was a relic of the past, of little or no residual utility. They had fresh faces, other players that they were cultivating to take the helm after driving Milošević out. The most that they would have been willing to arrange for him was a symbolic time served sentence in return for spilling the beans on his former boss.

Jovica Stanišić is another embodiment of Kissinger’s famous dictum, a lesson that Eastern European bumpkins never seem to learn.