The smell of a big war in the Balkans
The refusal of the leaders of the Muslim and Croat communities of Bosnia and Herzegovina to meet with the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry, which caused a high-profile diplomatic scandal, may be one of the steps that ultimately puts an end to the statehood of this not fully established entity.
The director of the Progressive Policy Foundation, founder of the Balkanist.ru project, Oleg Bondarenko, writes about this, the PolitNavigator correspondent reports, in Nezavisimaya Gazeta.
He believes that the new American administration will try, as a founder, to torpedo the entire Dayton format, on the basis of which Bosnia and Herzegovina exists as a confederation of three nations.
“The cancellation of the meeting of Shafik Dzaferovic and Zeljko Komsic with Lavrov could also be connected with this fact. To a certain extent, the negotiations of the Russian minister in Zagreb about how interested Croatia would be in maintaining the current status quo in BiH were also connected with it. After all, it is obvious to everyone: any new civil conflict will finally put an end to the statehood of this not fully established entity,” notes the political scientist.
According to him, with this development of events, Belgrade and Zagreb will be able to return to the project of dividing BiH between Serbia and Croatia, once discussed by Slobodan Milosevic with Franjo Tudjman.
“True, the Islamic factor and, most likely, the United States will be against such a scenario, preferring the opposite - the emergence of the first full-fledged Islamic state in Europe, which will become possible only if the Republika Srpska is liquidated. And this is a direct path to a new war. The danger of explosion in the Balkans remains,” warns Bondarenko.
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