“There are few countries like Republika Srpska (RS), Serbia, and Bulgaria, which keep their doors open to the Russian Federation,” said Sergey Baburin, a Russian right-wing politician, during his visit to the Municipality of Sokolac.
Baburin, along with two other members of the “high delegation of the Russian Federation”, as the visit was announced, was a guest of Milovan Bjelica, the Mayor of Sokolac, a town in the RS entity, about sixty kilometers from Sarajevo.
Sergey Baburin is the leader of the far-right party Russian All-People’s Union, which has not run in elections since 2007.
Moreover, he publicly supports Milorad Dodik, the president of RS, and was a defense witness before the Hague Tribunal in the case against Slobodan Milosevic, the former Serbian president.
During his visit to Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), he was announced as the President of the International Slavic Academy of Sciences, Education, Arts, and Culture, which is not registered as a scientific institution in Russia, according to the official register of educational institutions in that country.
What is Baburin’s role today and what role did he have in the nineties of the last century?
Baburin considers the President of the RS, Milorad Dodik, “a Serbian statesman who opposes the military-political, economic and spiritual attempts of the West to destroy the Serbs”, as he stated in his congratulatory letter to Dodik after the elections in October 2022.
“I dream that together we can move to a new level of our relations and start creating a unique union with Belarus, Serbia, and other friendly countries. I also place these hopes in Milorad Dodik,” said Baburin.
In the 1990s, as a parliamentarian, Baburin came to Belgrade to support Slobodan Milosevic, whom he calls “the last national hero of Yugoslavia”, and at the funeral in 2006, he claimed that “Milosevic was killed in The Hague”, where he was a witness to his defense. Milosevic died in custody during the trial for war crimes.
He also supports Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“In February 2022, the Russian Federation not only began the denazification and demilitarization of Ukraine but also began the practical liberation of the Russian world from the scourge of Neo-Nazism and Russophobia,” is Baburin’s position on Russian aggression against Ukraine, Radio Slobodna Evropa reports.
Photo: Mahir Sijamija/RFE/RL
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