Bosnia’s Dodik: From moderate to genocide-denying autocrat

By SABINA NIKSIC
Associated Press

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — Milorad Dodik was once described in Washington as an anti-nationalist “breath of fresh air” in the murderous, genocide-scarred Balkan morass of ethnically divided Bosnia. How times change. This week the Bosnian Serb political leader, now a genocide-denying secessionist, was slapped with new U.S. sanctions for alleged corruption. He responded in typical style, saying the days when the United States and other Western democracies “modeled Bosnia to their taste” are long gone. The sanctions, Dodik boasted, will just help the Serbs break free of Bosnia into the eager embrace of their “true friends” — Russia, China, the champions of illiberal democracy within the European Union, and neighboring Serbia.