While everything is being done in the West to strengthen the wall of isolation around Russia, and because of its aggression on Ukraine, which started almost four months ago, Dodik, as a member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), is one of the last European officials to meet with Putin.
But both before and after the war in Ukraine, concrete economic effects after the meeting were rarer.
At the last meeting, on June 17th, at the International Economic Forum in St. Petersburg, Dodik thanked Putin for “enabling gas prices to remain the same until the end of the year”.
This was agreed a day earlier during Dodik’s meeting with Gazprom director Alexei Miller.
Milorad Dodik told that he received a new invitation from Putin to visit Russia in September this year. The visit, if it happens, will be a month before the general elections in BiH.
This is not the first time that the Russian president has publicly supported Milorad Dodik.
In two cases, in 2014 and 2018, the two met just before the general elections in BiH. The first time, Dodik won the race for the Republika Srpska (RS) entity president, and the second time he won the most votes for the BiH presidency.
Political support was mutual. In late October 2011, Dodik, as the leader of the SNSD, attended a congress of Putin’s party, United Russia, in Moscow.
He was also the president of RS at the time.
When he returned from Russia, he stated that these two parties had signed an agreement on a strategic partnership, and stressedthat Russia plans to look for oil in BiH, but also to build a gas pipeline.
After the meeting in the Kremlin with Putin, in September 2014, Dodik stated that an agreement had been signed with Gazprom and that a branch of the South Stream gas pipeline in RS would be built.
Russia, meanwhile, has given up on building the pipeline because it could not bring the project into line with European Union (EU) rules.
According to the transcripts of the official Kremlin, the Russian president said at the time that trade between RS and Russia was “modest” but on the rise.
The last time Dodik traveled to Moscow was in December last year. Upon his return, he said that he “shook hands with the president and sat close and talked for almost an hour”.
There is no information about this meeting on the official website of the Kremlin.
During the visit, Dodik also met with the director of Gazprom, Alexei Miller, with whom, as he stated at the time, he agreed on the construction of a gas pipeline through RS, but also the construction of a gas power plant.
Putin and Dodik also met in September 2016, ahead of the local elections in BiH, when the situation in the Balkans and bilateral issues were discussed.
After the meeting, Dodik stated that Putin “expressed support for stabilization in the region and support for the Dayton Agreement.”, RSE writes.
E.Dz.
