SARAJEVO: Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik on Friday called on ethnic Serbs to quit the federal police force and courts and join the government of the deeply divided country’s Serb statelet.
The call follows a series of moves that risk pushing Bosnia into greater uncertainty a week after Dodik was convicted for defying an international envoy charged with overseeing the Balkan country’s peace accords.
“We have ensured them a job, while preserving their legal status, ranks, and positions. They will receive the same salary, or even a higher salary than they had,” said Dodik, who is the president of Bosnia’s Serb statelet Republika Srpska (RS).
Dodik later added there were no plans for violent escalation but insisted that the RS had “the ability to defend itself, and we will do that.”
Earlier this week, Dodik signed a raft of bills into law that banned the central police and judiciary from his statelet.
Dodik pushed the legislation through the RS parliament last week, after he was sentenced to a year in prison and banned from office for six years for refusing to comply with decisions made by Christian Schmidt — the international envoy charged with overseeing Bosnia’s peace accords.
The legislation has escalated tensions in Bosnia and is proving to be a key test for its fragile, post-war institutions.
Dodik later said he planned to ignore a summons from Bosnia’s chief prosecutor who is investigating Dodik for allegedly undermining the constitution.
Since the end of Bosnia’s inter-ethnic war in the 1990s, the country has consisted of two autonomous halves — the Serb-dominated RS and a Muslim-Croat statelet.
The two are linked by weak central institutions, while each has its own government and parliament.
The high representative holds vast powers in Bosnia — including the ability to effectively fire political leaders and strip them of power.
Dodik’s conviction last week was linked to his role pushing through two laws in 2023 previously annulled by the high representative Schmidt.
The legislation refused to recognize decisions made by the high representative and Bosnia’s constitutional court in the RS.
This followed months of tensions, as Dodik engaged in a bitter feud with Schmidt.
For years, Dodik has pursued a relentless separatist agenda that has put him on a collision course with Bosnia’s institutions.
The RS president has repeatedly threatened to pull the Serb statelet out of Bosnia’s central institutions — including its army, judiciary and tax system, which has led to sanctions from the United States.

KYIV: Kyiv said on Friday it was asking Italy for more information about a proposal by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni to extend NATO’s mutual defense umbrella to Ukraine without offering it alliance membership or sending peacekeeping troops.
Ukraine is seeking security guarantees from its Western allies ahead of any peace talks to end Russia’s invasion. It wants NATO membership but the United States under President Donald Trump has rejected this.
Britain, France and other countries are also drawing up plans to deploy European troops to safeguard a potential ceasefire under a future peace deal. Russia opposes such plans but Trump has said he believes Moscow might agree.
Meloni, leader of a far-right nationalist party in Italy, is an ally of Trump but has remained a strong public supporter of Ukraine.
On the sidelines of an EU summit in Brussels on Thursday, she said extending NATO’s Article 5 collective security agreement would be a more “lasting solution” than sending European peacekeepers or granting Kyiv full membership.
Article 5 of NATO’s founding treaty requires all alliance members to consider an attack on any of them to be an attack on all.
“We welcome this statement as part of the discussion on providing Ukraine with long-term security guarantees and ensuring security and peace in general,” Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Heorhii Tykhyi said at a briefing in Kyiv.
“As for this proposal specifically, we are in contact with our Italian colleagues to clarify the specifics of this proposal,” Tykhyi said, adding that Ukraine still wants its partners to send troop contingents as part of any peace effort.
Deputy Prime Minister Olha Stefanishyna told Ukrainian television on Friday that Meloni’s idea was “very pragmatic.”
Following a massive Russian air strike on Ukraine’s energy system on Friday, President Volodymyr Zelensky repeated a call made earlier this week for a truce covering air and sea, though not ground troops, as a first step toward peace.