UPDATE - Trump administration lifts sanctions on Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik

ADDS STATEMENT FROM DODIK, US SENATOR

​​​​​​​By Rabia Iclal Turan

WASHINGTON (AA) - The Trump administration on Wednesday lifted sanctions on Bosnia’s nationalist Serb leader Milorad Dodik, his family members and close associates.

The move reverses measures imposed for undermining the Dayton Peace Agreement that ended Bosnia’s war more than two decades ago.

The US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced the decision without explanation.

Dodik was first sanctioned in 2017 by the Obama administration for defying Bosnia’s Constitutional Court and obstructing the Dayton peace agreement. At the time, the Treasury Department accused him of threatening “sovereignty and territorial integrity of Bosnia and Herzegovina.”

The Biden administration imposed sanctions on Dodid again in 2022.

Earlier this year, a Bosnian court sentenced Dodik to a year in prison and barred him from politics for six years for defying the authority of the top international official overseeing the implementation of the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement.

Known for his frequent secessionist rhetoric, Dodik has repeatedly argued that Bosnia should adopt a new political agreement or separate entirely.

The 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement, which ended the Bosnian War, established Bosnia and Herzegovina as a state composed of two entities: the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH) and Republika Srpska (RS). Disagreements, however, about the interpretation and implementation of the agreement remain a source of contention.

In a post on the US social media company X, Dodik thanked US President Donald Trump and his associates “for correcting a grave injustice,” adding that the decision was “not merely a legal correction, but also a moral vindication” of those who served Republika Srpska.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, the highest-ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, criticized the move as “reckless and premature.”

“Dodik has undermined the Dayton Peace Agreement, cozied up to (Russian President Vladimir) Putin and profited from corruption — hardly grounds for relief,” she wrote on X. “The American people deserve answers.”