Milorad Dodik

Milorad Dodik (Милорад Додик, ; born 12 March 1959) is a Bosnian Serb politician serving as the 8th president of Republika Srpska since 2022.

In 1978, he graduated from an agricultural high school in Banja Luka, after which he entered the Faculty of Political Sciences at the University of Belgrade, where he graduated in 1983.

From 1986 through 1990, Dodik was the Chairman of the executive board of the Municipal Assembly of Laktaši.

Much like the SNSD, Dodik was initially considered as a moderate and reformist alternative to the ultranationalist Serb Democratic Party in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Since then, Dodik and the SNSD have pursued an increasingly-Serbian nationalist and separatist line, invoking the right of the Bosnian Serbs to self-determination.

His time in power has been characterised by accusations of authoritarianism from opponents, repudiation of federal Bosnian institutions, and closer connections to both Russia and Serbia.

In addition to claiming that the Srebrenica massacre is a "fabricated myth", Dodik has denied that the Bosnian Genocide happened and praised convicted war criminals Ratko Mladić and Radovan Karadžić.

The US and UK have imposed sanctions on him for allegedly undermining the territorial integrity of Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Dayton Peace Agreement.

Dodik was born in Banja Luka to Bogoljub and Mira Dodik.

He lived in Laktaši, where he attended elementary school.

There, he played on the town's basketball team in Yugoslavia's amateur league.

In 1990, at the first multi-party elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina, he was elected to the Assembly of the Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as a candidate of the Union of Reform Forces of Yugoslavia and was a political disciple of liberal reformer Ante Marković.

During the Bosnian War, Dodik served as a representative in the National Assembly of Republika Srpska.

During that time, he formed the Independent Members of Parliament Caucus (Клуб независних посланика у Народној Скупштини Републике Српске, Klub nezavisnih poslanika u Narodnoj Skupštini Republike Srpske), which was the only political opposition to the Serb Democratic Party (Српска демократска странка, Srpska demokratska stranka) and its allies, which held the absolute majority in the war-time parliament of the Republika Srpska.

Dodik has also been serving as the president of the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD) since its creation in 1996, and has occupied a number of political positions in Republika Srpska, the Serb-majority entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The caucus he chaired was to form the core of the Party of Independent Social Democrats (Stranka nezavisnih socijaldemokrata, or SNSD) in 1996, after the peace was signed as a result of the Dayton Agreement.

He was elected as the first President of SNSD.

The party later united with another social-democratic party to form the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats, of which Dodik is president.

After conflicts between Biljana Plavšić with the rest of Radovan Karadžić's Serb Democratic Party (SDS), she founded a new political party, the Serb National Alliance (SNS).

Early elections in Republika Srpska were held in 1997, after which Plavšić and her SNS closely cooperated with the smaller Serb socialist parties (Socialist Party and Dodik's SNSD).

Dodik was nominated Prime Minister of Republika Srpska, even though his party had only two seats in the National Assembly.

Dodik was the prime minister of Republika Srpska from 1998 to 2001 and from 2006 to 2010, and the president of Republika Srpska from 2010 to 2018.

During the campaign for the 2006 general election, following Montenegrin independence, Dodik said that Republika Srpska didn't rule out its right for an independence referendum.

At the election, Dodik's SNSD won 46.9% percent of votes, while the SDS won 19.5%.

The international community saw him as a moderate democratic leader of Republika Srpska.

Dodik had support from Western countries that were seeking to marginalise the Serbian nationalists.

They believed that they had found an alternative in Dodik.

After he became a prime minister, the West continued to support him at the expense of Serb nationalist parties.

The Western countries promised that, if Dodik remains the prime minister, Republika Srpska would receive Western economic assistance.

The OHR and the Western powers also wanted to ensure that he realised his promise to return 70,000 Croat and Bosniak refugees to Republika Srpska.

As promised, after Dodik won the election, Republika Srpska received financial aid from the European Union, that money was used to pay salaries for civil servants and the police.

In mid-February 2007, Dodik traveled to the United States, where he was received by Madeleine Albright.

She described him as "a breath of fresh air" and pledged €3.6 million of immediate aid.

Republika Srpska also received aid from the British government in the same month.

British Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, said in front of the National Assembly of Republika Srpska that Dodik's government "did more in its first two weeks to improve the lives of the people than its predecessor did in two years."

Later, Dodik became the most powerful Serb politician in Bosnia and Herzegovina and later the West viewed him as "an unabashed nationalist and the greatest threat to Bosnia and Herzegovina's fragile, multiethnic peace."

After he became a prime minister, Dodik became even more nationalist than the SDS.

During a police reform in Republika Srpska, Dodik managed to create a nationalist profile for himself.

Haris Silajdžić, meanwhile, won election for Bosniak member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Previously, he served as the 7th Serb member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina from 2018 to 2022.