Dodik: Kurti is playing a hero without a cover

The Community of Serb-majority Municipalities should have executive powers and in some parts resemble the Republika Srpska, which Sarajevo has turned into a "bogeyman" with constant attacks and accusations, Republika Srpska President, Milorad Dodik, says in an interview for Kosovo Online in Vienna.

He also notes that the Franco-German proposal is not much different from some in the past, given that it is based on the request that Serbia, at least tacitly, should recognize Kosovo, which, he points out, should never happen, adding that people should believe to President Aleksandar Vucic when he says that Serbia rejects the possibility of recognizing Kosovo in any way and rejects giving consent for Kosovo to join the United Nations.

The international community should not be trusted but should be discussed, and any proposal that did not respect the Serbian national and state position should be rejected, Dodik said.

International representatives brought a Franco-German proposal to resolve the Kosovo issue. The President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic, said that there was nothing good for Serbia in it, but that it had to be discussed. What is your view on that plan, have you seen it?

I spoke with Aleksandar Vucic, of course, about the challenges of that proposal. It does not differ much from what we saw in the past, it is based on the fact that Serbia should, in one way, tacitly recognize Kosovo. This, of course, is a serious impossibility for Serbia itself. President Vucic absolutely, like every responsible statesman, received it, and he could not reject it at the moment when the document was handed to him, but he had to hold a public discussion. Vucic's approach to go to the parliament and discuss it with different political factions is part of the responsibility he shows towards the subject. Serbia, as he said, rejected the possibility of recognizing Kosovo in any way and rejected giving consent for Kosovo to join the United Nations, not even tacit consent. This is something that the whole nation could hear in parliament and it has to be believed.

Since Kosovo became an international issue, for which the West is responsible, and not Serbia, many things have changed in the world, which no longer looks the same. The world is no longer unipolar, although America is still a powerful country. When it comes to the EU, no one could think that it would be left without Great Britain, so it stayed, no one expected the EU to react badly in the face of the covid epidemic and other crises. But they persist in an anti-Serb proposal for Serbia, but also for us in the Republika Srpska. You should not trust them, you should talk to them, but you should reject any proposal that does not respect the Serbian national and state position.

I understood the position of the official Belgrade, and we support not recognizing Kosovo. Bosnia and Herzegovina, because the Republika Srpska will not, following the policy of Belgrade, did not recognize Kosovo. I was pressured many times to do so, and I didn't. Equally, Vucic himself and the leadership of Serbia are daily exposed to various demands in an attempt to create an atmosphere of pressure that should lead to the solution they need. This needs to be discussed and I agree with Vucic when he said that he would continue the discussions from the moment when the Community of Serb-majority Municipalities was formed, with the executive functions that it had to have as agreed. In this regard, we should not continue the talks until the CSM is formed in the agreed capacity, and not as the Albanians are now brokering. Without executive functions, there is no point in building an empty shell that serves no purpose.

The West is also persistently trying to make Republika Srpska an empty shell without any content. That's the whole problem. This time they want to make an empty shell out of the CSM. I think that President Vucic is aware of this and that only what was agreed in Brussels, when Serbia made serious concessions in moving towards dialogue, must be fulfilled, and not some innovations.

Serbia is under great pressure to accept the Franco-German proposal, how much do these pressures affect the Republika Srpska and the Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in general?

Whenever an authentic political leadership appears in Banja Luka, the West "runs" to Belgrade to convince anyone, and now Vucic, that it is necessary for him to get involved in solving the problems in the Republika Srpska because there is "some wayward Dodik", whom only Serbia can put in order. Of course, if there is a weak political current in Banja Luka, then the West tells Serbia not to mess around and that they will solve it themselves. But when someone is strong, they ask Serbia to get involved, in order to further blame Serbia for their own failure. It's not about inventing hot water. We just want the letter of the Dayton Agreement to be implemented. The West is a big deceiver, primarily the Americans, the British, and even a significant part of the EU. They will, even when the signing takes place, on the same day, before the ink is dry on the signature, start to destroy what the Serbs got and try to change the position of the Serbs through additional negotiations, either in the state-legal sense of Serbia or in the Dayton position of Republika Srpska.

After their tutelage over Montenegro for so many years, since it became independent, Montenegro has never been in a worse political situation. Now, according to the traditional matrix used in the West, they would again blame Serbia for their failure, so they say "Vucic is always messing around, here's Dodik, he's not clean, he's messing with the Russians...". They also talk about some Russian influence, which does not exist at all, and no one talks about their influence, which is dramatically disastrous for Montenegro and all of us in the Balkans. The state that they want to create from Bosnia and Herzegovina is impossible. It is an impossible state. A possible state is the one written in Dayton. But it has been significantly desecrated, and if Bosnia and Herzegovina does not return to the letter of the Dayton constitution, it will not have any opportunities in the future. That is the essence, not Vucic, not Serbia.

Serbia does not suit them as a strong country; it suits the West as weak, Muslims as weak, and those quasi Montenegrins, who call themselves that, and even Albanians. Since Vucic made Serbia significantly strong in the circumstances that are possible, he will not be of any use to the West in a few months. He is already a serious nuisance to them in the corridors. In a few months, there will be public attacks on him. In this respect, you just need to prepare, and I am an obvious example of what it looks like.

President Vucic said that the situation in Ukraine would become more complicated and that the pressure on Serbia and the Serbs, due to Kosovo and Russia, would only increase. What do you expect?

Those pressures have already increased. They don't miss an opportunity to ask for sanctions, as well as to draw us in, to take a bad step toward Russia or Putin, because they think it is bad. I think that the west is basically with its arrogant policy, in which it has never accepted and realistically considered Russia's demands not to approach its borders. But, having done that, they are now blaming Putin in order to create an atmosphere in the West - "here, there is the culprit for our problems". It is Putin's fault that there are no street lights in Brussels. Who else is to blame? Dodik, of course, and now Vucic. They go by those matrices.

Historically speaking, this is a momentum like many events that we look back on from World War II, and World War I... How we behave is very important. If we were to say that we condemn Russia, and Putin, adhere to sanctions, and introduce visas for Russians in Bosnia and Herzegovina, does anyone think that we would get anything from the West? And we would permanently lose friends who proved to be our only support in history. This is our answer to our friends and for investing in the future, because we cannot expect anything from the West. No matter that they offer democratic life, and economic prosperity. Germany could be economically prosperous because, for years and decades, it dragged cheap raw materials from Russia because Russia was disordered. It suits them that Russia is unsettled, not Putin, who united and strengthened Russia.

Suddenly it appears that Putin has stronger weapons than the West, so there is panic in the West. Now they want to see what the Russians have, to use in Ukraine so that they can act. Obviously, the Russians are not stupid. It is such a mockery of stories about political concepts. They talk about Russian influence, and Dodik, who is among the first, but no one has any influence on me, only the Serbs. I am a man of the Serbs, the Republika Srpska, I only answer to those who voted for me, I only behave that way. If Putin asked me to do something that was not in our interest, it would not happen. He never asked for such a thing, and the West always does. Wherever we meet, they are always asking for something. Therefore, our position on this is clear.

Europe is losing its position and it will lose two powerful things - it will lose Russia because the Russians are diversifying their offers. For everything we can sell in the west, they always ask us for some kind of certification, especially for agricultural products, and since they have a shortage of electricity in their markets, they tell us - it doesn't matter, you can produce from the dirtiest raw materials, just give us electricity, and you get poisoned. This is their attitude towards us. Now that there is no electricity, they would now take it through some regional European energy communities, in order to control our investments, production, and increase prices, and thus they would withdraw all electricity, and we would remain energy poor.

In Pristina, comparisons between the Community of Serb-majority Municipalities and the Republika Srpska are heard every day, that is, the message that such a CSM that would resemble the Republika Srpska is out of the question. Are these just excuses for the CSM not to be formed, bearing in mind Kurti's six conditions for the formation of the Community?

There are no Kurti terms, only an agreement, which must be enforced. It is known what was agreed. What does this mean, that every new prime minister who comes can set his own new conditions? The Muslims in Sarajevo, who are in contact with the Albanians in Kosovo, managed to denigrate the Republika Srpska to such a level that we are like some kind of bogeyman for Kurti. I did not deal with them, except that I followed the politics of Serbia, but now I will say - Serbia should never grant independence to Kosovo and Metohija. Let them do whatever they think they should, they can laugh at us, and we will wait, but history is full of changes. Americans and Europeans want to say that the borders in the Balkans are finished, but they are not.

In any case, their attitude that Kosovo and Metoija is a separate case, that it does not apply to others, is a message to us in Republika Srpska as well - don't emulate this, it doesn't apply to you... Heroes are being worshiped without cover. He only has American power and NATO behind him, and they are defending their newborn somewhere in history, which wants to be a state. If they want to play states, Republika Srpska is also a state. The CSM should have executive power, and in some part, it should resemble Republika Srpska, and that is correct.