Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic announced the growing external pressure on Serbia and the Republika Srpska of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) in light of the armed conflict in Ukraine by imposing personal sanctions against Serbian political leaders.
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The Serbian Head of State and Serbian Patriarch Porfiry began a two-day tour of the Republika Srpska of Bosnia and Herzegovina (RS BiH) on Thursday, hosted by RS BiH President Milorad Dodik and the Bosnian Serb political leadership.
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“The economic situation in the conditions of the military conflict in Ukraine with great political pressure is not easy … We will provide, as much as we can in the future, even more significant economic support to the Republika Srpska. We know that the main blow will be to show that RS BiH cannot resist so that we beg someone “great” from the outside, making political concessions,” Vucic told the audience, the broadcast was led by the Tanyug agency.
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According to him, Serbia will never forget about international law, “but also about its people” in the Republika Srpska of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
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“Sanctions are a very serious problem, as you know, they were also imposed against the head of state security, more precisely the Security and Information Agency (BIA) of Serbia (Aleksandra Vulina), before they were imposed against the leaders of the Serbs in the north of Kosovo and Metohija, when it was necessary to make them criminals and to open the way for Kurti for anti-Serb actions, this has been done with President Dodik and the entire leadership of RS BiH,” the President of Serbia stressed.
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On the night of August 1, the US State Department announced the introduction of personal sanctions against Serb BiH Presidium Member Zelka Tsviyanovich, Chairman of the Assembly (Parliament) of the RS BiH Nenad Stevandich, Head of the Government of the RS BiH Radovan Viskovic and Minister of Justice Milos Bukeilovich. The reason is the adoption on June 27 by the Parliament of the Republic of BiH of a law that makes the decisions of the Constitutional Court of BiH in Sarajevo invalid on the territory of the Republika Srpska. Dodik, who has been under US sanctions for years, responded that the restrictive measures showed Washington’s inability to change the policy of the Bosnian Serbs.
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In mid-July, the US Treasury announced the imposition of sanctions against the head of the Serbian counterintelligence, the former head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Alexander Vulin. He took over the BIA in December 2022, having previously been the country’s interior minister and defense minister. Vulin also heads the “Movement of Socialists” he founded. The President of Serbia then pointed out that the US authorities, before imposing sanctions on the director of the BIA, demanded that the country’s leadership support the restrictive measures of the West against Russia.
