Kremlin exploiting divisions in Bosnia Herzegovina to gain influence
Jasmin Mujanović (@JasminMuj) is a political scientist specializing in the politics of post-authoritarian and post-conflict democratization. Originally from Sarajevo, he is currently an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Political Science at Elon University and a policy consultant for the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung — Dialogue Southeast Europe office .
Aleksandar Brezar (@brezaleksandar) is a journalist, factchecker and debunker. Former Brussels correspondent for BHRT (National Radio-Television of Bosnia and Herzegovina), he also founded and headed its New Media department, and is a senior contributor for Analiziraj, a Bosnian media ethics and anti-disinformation portal.
Jasmin and Aleksandar have wide experience in a variety of media outlets, ranging from print and radio to television and online/new media (see end of report for more information). They recently launched@SarajevoCalling, a podcast on Southeast European affairs and contemporary Western Balkan politics:
Introduction
Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) is undoubtedly the most complex polity in Europe and has very likely the most complex government structure in the world. Understanding the state of Russian influence in BiH is therefore necessarily a matter of both grappling with a volatile and fragmented domestic political scene, and the particular nature of Kremlin interest in the country. Nevertheless, the Russian focus on BiH is part of a regional strategy on the part of the Kremlin and can be distilled to a single sentiment: keeping Sarajevo out of NATO at all costs.
To this end, Russia makes use of a variety of tools: BiH’s broader post-war dysfunction, the result of the country’s ethno-sectarian constitutional system designed and maintained by the international community; the client-services of particular domestic political actors (primarily the dominant Serb and Croat nationalist blocs in BiH); and a robust array of soft power tactics, most importantly the media. To the Kremlin’s great advantage, Bosnian political conditions since 2006 have, largely due to their own internal dynamics, deteriorated to such a degree that Moscow’s day-to-day objectives in the country might simply be characterized as “maintaining instability”.
Yet Moscow’s new-found assertiveness in BiH is no mere “spoiler effect”, and it is precisely the unique complexity and volatility of BiH politics that makes Russia’s growing presence in the country dangerous to the Western Balkans and Europe as a whole. In short, as this report will demonstrate, BiH unfortunately remains very much a contested country, exposed to the pernicious irredentist ambitions of both neighbouring states and the rapacious, corrupt machinations of domestic elites, including those who nominally purport to be champions of BiH statehood and its Euro-Atlantic integration processes.
Underlying this picture of contemporary Bosnian politics is a particular tragedy. BiH is a political entity which briefly enjoyed seemingly unparalleled international support, but was then dramatically left to list in the waters of an increasingly hostile regional and international environment in the wake of the onset of the US ‘War on Terror’ and the ensuing shift to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. As a result, we are seeing the effects of a job left unfinished by the international community, above all by the EU, which acquired primacy in international democratization efforts in BiH following the effective US withdrawal. Today, BiH finds itself in a domestic political climate that often feels, especially to locals, similar to either the immediate post-war years (1996–2000) or, worse, to the pre-war period (1987–1991).
In such an atmosphere of growing anxiety, confusion and anger, Russia has emerged as a dangerous new accelerant. If Moscow comes to the conclusion that it is beneficial to its interests to repeat in BiH an operation like the 2016 coup attempt in Montenegro, or the 2017 storming of the Macedonian parliament, the results would be catastrophic. BiH is, arguably, the most unstable country on the continent, and even a small spark could ignite a cycle of significant violence — probably not on the level of what occurred in the 1990s, but proximate to the worst of ‘The Troubles’ in Northern Ireland.
Our report is divided into three main sections. The first portion of the report provides an overview of domestic BiH politics and its key actors; the second part examines Russia’s growing political assertiveness in the country, reviewing both Moscow’s hard and soft power initiatives in BiH; and the third section provides a comprehensive overview of BiH’s media environment and Russia’s increasingly successful manipulation of both traditional and online media in the country to advance its anti-NATO (and anti-Western) agenda.
BIH: DEFINED BY DIVISIONS
Bosnia and Herzegovina after the Dayton Peace Agreement
The structure of the Bosnian state that emerged after the Bosnian War (1992–1995) and was codified in the Dayton Peace Agreement was a political entity marked by extreme fragmentation. The war-time boundaries between the respective sides of the conflict — the Sarajevo government forces, the Belgrade-backed Serb nationalist forces and the Zagreb-backed Croat nationalist forces — became the new administrative boundaries of the Bosnian state, joined together through a loose, state-level parliament and tripartite presidency. Scholars have used different terms to categorize post-war BiH (i.e. referring to it as a “ethnic consociationalist” regime, an “asymmetrical federation”, and a “fractured authoritarian” state) but the sum of their analyses is that contemporary BiH is a country that, at the level of its political institutions, is defined by its divisions.
Domestically, this has meant that Bosnian politics remains deeply acrimonious and polarized around mostly, through not entirely, the same cleavages as when the fighting ended in 1995–1995. Serb nationalists have continued to agitate for, at least, the secession of the Republika Srpska (RS) entity and, presumably, its annexation by Serbia. Since 2006, the primary vehicle for this project has been the erstwhile ‘moderate’ Milorad Dodik and his Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD). Croat nationalists continue to agitate for the (re)creation of an autonomous Croat entity, like the Serb-dominated RS, and more strident elements in this camp also explicitly advocate for secession. The primary exponent of this autonomist line is the Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ, and its long-time boss Dragan Čović. For their part, Bosniak nationalists are chiefly concentrated in the SDA, whose political programme is comparatively more ambiguous but might be distilled down to the policy of transforming BiH into the ‘national homeland’ and/or nation-state of the Bosniak community, in which ethnic Serbs and Croats would be reduced to the status of ‘minorities’ rather than constitutive peoples. Together, these three blocks, or similarly constituted parties in the case of the SNSD, have dominated BiH’s post-war electoral politics, and there has never been a state-level government formed without at least one, and usually all three parties, in the governing coalition.
The fourth major political camp in the country remains the fragmented left-civic coalition, whose political fortunes have waxed and waned since the first democratic elections in 1991 but might be broadly said to represent approximately a quarter of the Bosnian electorate. However, owing to the extreme ethno-sectarian tilt of BiH’s constitutional regime, their ability to translate their support to actual political power has been limited. Nevertheless, their political programme is important to note; it focuses on attempts to build in BiH a functional, integrated, secular, multi-ethnic, representative democracy, in line with states like Canada, Belgium, and South Africa, rather than the existing sectarian regime. As noted, however, their influence has been limited by the country’s constitutional structure — which in turn has also provided ample footholds for malign foreign influence — but also a degree of political incompetence incurred by long stints in the political wilderness by these blocs.
The Dayton Accords created in BiH arguably the most complicated constitutional structure in the world. At present, only a broad summary of this system is possible. BiH has fourteen different governments with significant administrative responsibilities. There are two main entities: the Bosniak and Croat-dominated Federation of BiH, which is further divided into ten cantons; and the Serb-ruled RS. There is also the autonomous city of Brčko. The state-level government is comprised of the bicameral parliamentary assembly, the Council of Ministers (a quasi-executive cabinet akin to the prime minister’s office in the UK), and a tripartite presidency. Each of the entities and cantons, as well as the Brčko district, has their own assembly and an assortment of executive posts. Individual posts at each level of government are distributed and staffed along a rigid ethnic quota system, and representatives of each of the constitutive peoples (i.e. Bosniaks, Serbs, and Croats) enjoy extensive veto and obstruction powers to prevent government formation and function in the event of any perceived slight or attack on their community.
Atop this morass of jurisdictions sits the Office of the High Representative (OHR), an internationally-appointed body which is meant to supervise the implementation of the Dayton Accords, possessing expansive powers, including the ability to sack and appoint, scrap and impose officials and laws, as the High Representative, and the members’ Peace Implementation Council (PIC) (i.e. representatives of nearly three dozen governments from around the world), see fit. In practice, however, the OHR has become an almost entirely observational body, and has not taken a meaningful, proactive decision to intervene in Bosnian politics since 2011. Still, the OHR’s presence within the Bosnian constitutional system remains a point of contention, especially among Serb nationalists, and is an important dimension of the specificity of the Bosnian government.
Unsurprisingly, the defining qualities of such a complex system are corruption, a lack of transparency and accountability, and polarization. BiH is typically characterized as one of the two most corrupt states in Europe (along with Moldova), and the linkages between ruling, nationalist elites and organized crime constitute a political-criminal nexus that defines the BiH political economy. Moreover, by dividing the country along almost exclusively ethnic lines, the Dayton Accords inherently empowered centrifugal rather than integrationist tendencies among the entrenched political class, which is why, despite decades of EU and US assistance, BiH politics remains fundamentally dominated by sectarian strongmen. These dynamics, in turn, have proven to be fruitful terrain for foreign interference, and Russia has emerged as the driving bulwark of this trend in BiH politics since 2014.
Local and International Shifts since 2014
In February of 2014, BiH was rocked by violent anti-government demonstrations, the most volatile display of public anger in the country in decades. Indeed, the last major riot in BiH prior to the events in 2014 occurred in 1914, after the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. The February riots resulted in the ransacking of numerous government buildings, including the state presidency, as well as the torching of several party offices (namely the SDA and HDZ seats in Mostar). These were in turn followed by remarkable, weeks-long, ad hoc, citizen-led “plenums” which succeeded, albeit temporarily, in forcing a degree of government accountability concerning certain structural, political issues in the country (i.e. financial self-dealing among elected representatives) but these two were cut short by a combination of police pressure and the catastrophic flooding in May of that year.
Although there were no major demonstrations in the RS, public support there for the protests was significant, and there is evidence of a major, pre-emptive police crackdown by the RS authorities that prevented the protests from spreading to the region. And while the respective nationalist blocs were able to reconstitute their support during the general election in October of that year, the February protests nevertheless introduced the previously unknown spectre of social insurrection into the calculus of Bosnian politics. Indeed, the Bosnian authorities, in a rare show of unity, began to acquire anti-riot equipment at a dizzying pace following the protests.
The EU responded to the events in February 2014 with a renewed push to open the country’s path towards membership, initiating the (British-German conceived) Reform Agenda, which focused on addressing underlying socio-economic inequalities and inefficiencies in BiH’s economy while downgrading the significance of politically sensitive issues like constitutional and electoral reform. The Reform Agenda eventually led to BiH’s formal application for EU candidate status in 2016, as well as the adoption of several key reform initiatives (e.g. an excise tax on gas) although many of these have proven unpopular in BiH itself. This is largely, it must be said, because the EU has done a poor job of ensuring taxes have actually gone to promised infrastructure spending, which has, in reality, nearly ground to a complete halt in a country which already has some of the worst transport networks in Europe. There is presently a renewed push by the EU to ensure candidate status for the country by 2019 but this appears to be an unlikely prospect given the deteriorating domestic political dynamics. Membership, however, remains broadly popular among the public.
RETURNING RUSSIA
While some observers hailed the Reform Agenda as evidence of a renewed EU approach in BiH, local elites interpreted it largely as a climbdown by Brussels; in the face of mounting public anger, the EU was willing to help local elites avoid issues that would actually imperil their governments (i.e. constitutional reforms in line with European democratic standards) in exchange for some minor socio-economic reforms aimed at securing social peace. This cynical assessment was buttressed over the next three years by a succession of international crises: the Russian occupation of eastern Ukraine, the Brexit referendum in the UK, and the election of Donald Trump in the US. Russian interference in both the Brexit referendum and the 2016 US election, on top of the blatant Russian aggression in Ukraine, was interpreted by local elites as a sign that Moscow had definitively returned to great power status in international relations. It was willing and capable of confronting the US, NATO, and EU — and winning.
In short, Bosnian elites, especially those in the RS but also in the HDZ, interpreted each of these events as mounting proof of a supposed twilight of the West. That is, the EU and the US were no longer committed to either the liberal-democratic world order they had built after 1945, nor were they capable of or interested in confronting rogue regimes which actively challenged this order, even in Europe. Moreover, Western publics were increasingly swayed by nativist sentiments, making the likelihood of BiH’s entry into the EU — with its majority Muslim population and association in the Western public imagination with war and genocide — a fool’s errand. In other words, ‘the West’ as a coherent, values-bound community was unravelling, Russia was ascendant, and as a result, new political possibilities were coming into view.
The objective of Bosnian elites since then has been to extract as much tribute from the waning EU as possible while simultaneously pivoting to new international benefactors: Russia, Turkey, China and the Gulf monarchies. The regional elite approach has shifted similarly, albeit with the U.S. being the more obvious target of persuasion and intimidation, which can be seen most obviously in the ongoing re-partition proposals in Kosovo coming out of Belgrade and certain political circles in Pristina. In any case, each of the new international actors in BiH can be characterized as an authoritarian regime, highlighting the Bosnian elite’s likewise blatantly anti-democratic turn, and alerting us to the obvious, impending security crises that will follow. Because authoritarian regimes necessarily engage in exclusively zero-sum relationships, both domestically and internationally, the prospects for renewed violence in BiH, and the region, are growing.
Of these new authoritarian actors, Russia is doubtlessly the most important, above all, because of Moscow’s capacity and willingness to deliberately undermine BiH’s peace and security. And because of BiH’s central geographic and political position in the Western Balkans, any major shocks to BiH’s stability would likewise affect and, almost certainly, directly involve its neighbours, quickly making this a continental rather than local crisis.
Russia’s Local Clients
The clearest indication of the growing influence of these foreign authoritarian regimes in BiH is Russia’s assertive intervention into the country’s domestic politics since 2014. Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine was implicitly and explicitly supported by the governments in the RS and Serbia proper, while hundreds of Serb militants have travelled to the occupied Donbas to assist the Russian war effort in the region. At least a portion of these Serbian nationals are veterans of Belgrade’s invasion and occupation of eastern BiH in the 1990s. For its part, the government of Milorad Dodik has sought to aggressively curry favour with the Kremlin especially as its secessionist and obstructionist policies in BiH have led to Banja Luka’s marginalization by the US and, to a significantly lesser extent, the EU.
In this regard then, there is an intersection between Moscow’s attempts to create brushfire crises for the West, especially in strategically vulnerable regions like the Western Balkans, and the political machinations of local elites, which predate and go beyond Russia’s immediate interests. Nevertheless, Russia represents a significant catalysing agent even in the context of these local dynamics. Ideologically, Russia’s activities in southeastern Europe, and especially the Western Balkans, are geared towards creating alternative frameworks for political legitimacy for Moscow’s respective partner governments in the region. Through these efforts, Russia seeks to entice these, and other local actors, to shift their political, economic, and security allegiances towards Moscow, and away from Brussels and Washington.
Even if Russia does not — and, arguably, cannot — offer the kinds of cohesive institutional linkages and socio-economic benefits the EU (and the Atlantic community more broadly) can, the strategy is nevertheless effective because it concentrates on the venal and personal interests of local elites, not the well-being of the citizens of these states. Indeed, rather than trying and failing to advance the principles of good governance, this is an entirely parallel approach that actively privileges the interests of elites over those of the public at large. In short, Moscow invests in strongman regimes to advance its strategic aims in the region: disrupting EU and NATO enlargement and cohesion in the Western Balkans. And among these actors in the Western Balkans, there is no more pliant and willing client than the Milorad Dodik regime.
Accordingly, while Russia’s economic ties with the RS government still pale in comparison to the EU’s overall contributions to BiH’s economy, political and security ties have increased dramatically, and these are, in the Bosnian political context, far more important. Nevertheless, some backchannel money flows can also be observed, although these are difficult to measure; Russia’s repayment of a Soviet-era debt to BiH in 2017 was largely intended as a cash injection to Dodik’s government and Russian “investments” in the RS’ nascent energy industry may likewise be thinly veiled money laundering operations — although these are also part of a broader Russian energy politics strategy, which Moscow has employed throughout much of Eastern Europe. There are also persistent rumours about still further illicit money flows — especially via the RS’ notoriously weak and poorly regulated banking industry — but concrete evidence of such practices has been difficult to obtain.
While the Balkans are not a priority for Russian foreign policy — as least as compared to Ukraine or Syria — Moscow is determined to prevent further NATO expansion in the region. That was made apparent by Russia’s involvement in the Montenegrin coup attempt in October 2016 on the eve of the country’s accession to the alliance, the revelation of long Russian (and Serbian) clandestine interference in Macedonia in June 2017, and Moscow’s explicit statement that it opposes BiH’s prospective NATO membership.
In this regard, BiH is of special importance as it is the strategic centre of the Western Balkans — virtually every major conflict in the region since the 19th century has therefore revolved around control of BiH. Moreover, the country’s central location within the region means that its internal fragmentation and instability is a liability for each of its neighbours, even though they are also the primary architects of this factionalism. As such, to “lose” BiH to NATO is in the Kremlin’s view to lose the Western Balkans in their entirety, even if the deepening of linkages with the Dodik regime and Belgrade would presumably continue.
As noted, Russia’s primary means of preventing BiH’s accession to NATO is the Milorad Dodik government. But its growing ties with the SNSD’s long-time partner, the HDZ BiH and its leader Dragan Čović, cannot be discounted. While Dodik is explicit in his anti-NATO stance, and argues that his government’s opposition to NATO therefore means that BiH as a whole is blocked from entry into the alliance, Čović and the HDZ BiH nominally support BiH’s NATO path. In practice though, Čović and his party have undermined every credible effort at streamlining security and policing structures in BiH — including a near shooting incident between HDZ-controlled police units in the Herzegovina-Neretva Canton (Hercegovačko-neretvanski kanton, HNK) and officers from the capital attempting to escort a convoy of migrants in May of 2018 — and most every other constitutional reform effort, often while explicitly harmonizing their efforts with the government in Banja Luka.
After the ICTY’s final ruling in the so-called “Herceg-Bosna Six” case in 2018, for instance, in which six commanders of the former Zagreb-backed Herceg-Bosna para-state were convicted of crimes against humanity during the Bosnian War, Čović threatened to block Sarajevo’s EU and NATO accession paths. This took place amid increasingly extreme brinkmanship by the HDZ BiH, with the backing of the HDZ government in Zagreb, concerning their demands for changes to BiH’s elections law, aimed at virtually disenfranchising thousands of Croats in Bosnia proper (whose partisan loyalties to the HDZ are historically far weaker than those of their brethren in south of the country), while inflating the percentage of seats that would be allocated in the state parliament from the party’s western Herzegovina heartland.
Both Dodik and Russia’s ambassador to BiH repeatedly came out in favour of the HDZ BiH’s position in this dispute, even as informed observers have continued to dismiss the party’s claims as largely spurious or, at least, profoundly disingenuous (especially considering the party’s continued obstruction of a series of rulings by the European Court of Human Rights which likewise concern BiH’s electoral framework). Nevertheless, the years-long alliance between the SNSD and HDZ is an established factor of Bosnian politics, and one that has successfully obstructed key rule of law and security sector reforms, as has been consistently noted over the last year in a series of joint statements by an influential group of Western embassies in Sarajevo. Given Russia’s objectives in the region, it is understandable that Moscow has now established ties not only with the SNSD but also the HDZ BiH.
Moscow’s deepening links with the HDZ BiH can also be traced in Russia’s growing clout in Croatia itself and with the ruling HDZ bloc there (which, incidentally, is the HDZ BiH’s primary foreign patron). Russia has emerged as the primary creditor of the failing Agrokor consortium, once the largest private employer in the region, whose collapse threatens the whole of Croatia’s economy. The state-owned firm Rosneft, one of Russia’s largest oil companies, has also expressed interest in purchasing INA, Croatia’s erstwhile national gas and oil company. The gas market in Croatia, meanwhile, is already dominated by Gazprom, the sole provider of gas for Prvo plinarsko društvo (PPD), the country’s only gas distribution company. These economic ties have also been cemented through deepening political links: Croatia’s President, Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović, has met Vladimir Putin repeatedly in the past two years, including a three-day stay in Sochi in October 2017.
Still, it is the Dodik government which is clearly Russia’s primary proxy in BiH and the region as whole, even more so than the Aleksandar Vučić government in Belgrade. While Serbia is host to a Russian “humanitarian centre” in Niš, widely understood to actually be a military installation, the local paramilitaries trained and equipped there (a group styling itself as Српска част or “Serb(ian) Honour”) have so far only been deployed to the RS. The group’s leader, Bojan Stojković, has also professed his zeal to intervene on behalf of the Serb community in northern Kosovo. Moreover, through his own social media posts, it is clear that Stojković and leading members of his group have visited Russia on repeated occasions. And in January 2018, Bosnian media reported that he and members of both the Serbian and RS chapters of Serbian Honour had received training by Russian paratroopers in the aforementioned humanitarian centre in Niš, Serbia, and that Stojković at least had been synched up with Russian paramilitary groups as early as 2007.
Recent revelations of this group’s activities in eastern BiH were followed by credible reports of significant arms procurements by the Dodik government ahead of the 2018 elections. Specifically, the Banja Luka government is understood to have purchased at least 2,500 assault rifles from Serbia in 2018, and a total of over 4,000 such rifles over the last two years, as well as several Russian-manufactured Igla 1-V anti-aircraft missiles. These procurements likely make the RS police the most heavily-armed police unit in the country, virtually on par with the country’s armed forces (which have seen a dramatic decline in personnel in just the last few months). Indeed, according to the country’s High Representative, the RS police may currently be as well armed as the Slovenian armed forces, a NATO member state. In the event of an actual confrontation between RS and state security forces — as nearly happened in late 2015, when the Banja Luka government monetarily pulled out of joint policing structures — it is an open question as to whether the latter would prevail without international support.
Further Russian linkages with the Dodik government can be observed in the recent presence of the Night Wolves (Noćni vukovi), the so-called ‘patriotic biker gang’ on the payroll of the Russian government who have also aided Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine, and who toured the RS and Serbia in March (see here for more detail). A group of Cossacks — presented in the media as a “dance troupe” — also visited the RS in late 2014; members of this group also founded a “New Cossack army” in neighbouring Montenegro in 2016, in the same period as the Russian-backed coup attempt against the government in Podgorica. In April 2018, Valentina Matviyenko, speaker of the Russian Federation Council, and one of Putin’s closest associates, visited both Sarajevo and Banja Luka, while Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, visited in September in a clear attempt to help shore up public support in the RS for the SNSD’s re-election campaign. These visits followed the arrival of South Ossetian officials at the RS’ government’s controversial (and unconstitutional) 9 January commemorations that year, which mark the entity’s founding in 1992, and with whom the entity authorities subsequently signed formal cooperation agreements. The 2019 festivities were notably more muted, but nevertheless featured a local chapter of the Night Wolves, as well as heavily armed RS police units and a newly manufactured armoured personnel carrier prototype nicknamed ‘Despot’.
However, Russia’s influence over the Serb nationalist political establishment in BiH — and their closely related partners in Belgrade — is not limited to overt political support. Cultural centres, such as Russia’s government-funded ‘Russkiy Mir’ institutes for instance — branches of which exist already or are being opened in Belgrade, Novi Sad, Skopje, Banja Luka, Podgorica, Budva, and Maribor — purport to provide students with Russian-language skills and an introduction to Russian culture more broadly. But looking at their programmes, it’s clear they are primarily geared towards feeding participants the Kremlin line on both current events and history and ‘politically correct’ interpretations of faith, culture and society. The scholarships these centres promote serve much the same end, only with students relocating to Russia itself for the duration of their studies. Russian nationals affiliated with the institutes are also frequently “former” security and intelligence services operatives.
Then there are the plethora of cultural clubs and associations of various sorts, including those with distinctly paramilitary bents. These groups exist to supplement concurrent Russian-sponsored militarization and re-armament efforts in these societies by further inculcating an ethos of the ‘citizen-soldier’ in the public. Recent revelations of child-soldier camps in Serbia, for instance, speak clearly to the proliferation of these practices, and there is reason to believe that ethnic Serbs from BiH have participated in these and similar exercises. As noted above, this is an obvious way in which indoctrination in “patriotic” or nationalist causes serves to divert public attention from actual concerns with governance and accountability. They also impose a siege mentality on society which likewise serves to undermine democratic deliberation and debate and promotes strongman politics. And all of this, of course, is virtually identical to the way in which the Milošević regime dealt with civil society in Serbia and Belgrade-occupied regions in Croatia, BiH and Kosovo during the 1990s.
The proliferation and promotion of martial values is further aided by Moscow’s recent round of religious projects in the region, such its donation of a mosaic for Belgrade’s St Sava Church, and the ongoing construction of a massive Russian-Serb Orthodox Church and centre in Banja Luka. Indeed, the role of the Orthodox faith is central to Russia’s soft power overtures, especially as concerns the emphasis placed by advocates on the intimate relationship between the state and church and, specifically, the government and the church. Such initiatives are also complimented by the ongoing russification of the public imagination and space in the region, as evidenced by the 2014 construction of a monument to Tsar Nicholas II in Belgrade, a smaller version of which was revealed in Banja Luka the same year. On both occasions, Orthodoxy and Russian imperial and geopolitical strength were conceptually wedded.
This colonization of public spaces is supplemented through the proliferation of books, magazines, radio and television programs and online outlets all devoted to promoting (or “revealing”) Russia’s ties and contributions to the region. These practices also actively seek to blur the lines between culture and politics, as evidenced by the attempted visit of Zakhar Prilepin to BiH in August 2018. In the RS regime press, Prilepin was represented as a “Russian writer” due to attend a literary event in Banja Luka, rather than a prominent militia leader in occupied Ukraine. Bosnian authorities barred his entry, prompting sharp protests from the Russian embassy and the Dodik government.
MEDIA: FERTILE GROUND
The Bosnian Media Landscape: Fertile Ground for Disinformation
Since the Bosnian War, the media landscape in BiH has followed the pattern also visible in other countries in the region, as well as other transitional states. Namely, the proliferation of a smorgasbord of public broadcasters, privately owned media outlet and a variety of online outlets with dubious ownership structures which only superficially resemble a genuinely democratic society. In reality, a combination of political influence, pressure and outright control, coupled with a lack of strong regulations and/or regulatory bodies specifically related to online outlets, and generally low editorial standards, have turned both the outlets and media professionals, in a majority of cases at least, into pliable subjects capable of little resilience to outside pressure.
One major reason for this state of affairs can be found in the financial insecurity of media professionals in the country, with wages usually below the average, and in most cases comparable to those of workers in the poorly paid service industry. This has led to the erosion of overall competitiveness among staff of the traditional media, particularly seen in the drop in quality in the public sector, Radio-Television BiH (BHRT), which had once been considered to adhere — or at least appeared to genuinely aspire — to the highest ethical and professional standards. With individual previously publicly owned outlets, such as Oslobođenje, historically BiH’s most preeminent daily newspaper, sold to private investors, and other important outlets ceasing to exist or shifting to different, more cost-efficient platforms, by the start of the 2010s the media landscape in BiH had become still further impoverished and more prone to both domestic and foreign political pressure.
The public broadcasters in BiH follow the same pattern of post-Dayton division as the rest of the country: in addition to the state-level public broadcasting service, BHRT, both entities have their own broadcasting companies, RTRS in the Republika Srpska, and Federalna TV (FTV) in the Federation of BiH. Although BHRT had shown the most resilience to political influence, due to the nature of the three-pronged public broadcasters’ position as publicly-owned companies and the fact that the managing boards are selected through political processes (e.g. through state or entity parliaments), the other two broadcasters have been known to participate in favouritism and outright propaganda, particularly in the case of RTRS. As seen in the weekly reports on the contents of news programs of the three public broadcasters for the past five years as analysed by the media monitoring outlet Analiziraj RTRS has consistently sided with those in power, particularly Milorad Dodik and his SNSD. Since 2014, that has also meant increasingly scathing attacks on opposition parties in the RS, and likewise glowing portrayals of Russia and Russian influence in BiH and the region.
Although comparisons have been made between RTRS and RTS, Serbia’s public broadcaster, and its practices during the Milošević period, it is clear that at least some of the practices come straight out of the Kremlin’s playbook: blatant one-sidedness is often apparent, with no effort made to present any other view, especially in stories concerning the ruling SNSD; facts are disregarded and treated as secondary to opinions, either of those in power or alleged “experts” close to the regime; time is allotted in order to prioritise what those in power deem important, while disinformation is rife as well as obfuscation, especially when it comes to subjects not supporting the official narrative of a politically and economically strong and progressive entity, which in RTRS broadcasts is routinely presented as a de facto independent state.
There are near daily examples of reports in which the growing numbers of workers’ strikes, civic protests and assorted economic hardships (recall that the RS is the poorest administrative region in the Western Balkans and possibly in the whole of Europe) are either merely glossed over or ignored entirely, especially in cases in which such demonstrations can be papered over with appeals to ethno-national identity or the perceived solidarity of the audience (e.g. anniversaries of wartime events, particularly those which are seen in the collective memory as victimizing either Bosnian Serbs or Serbs in general). Another tactic that compounds the damage to the unity of BiH can be seen in subtle differentiation between matters pertaining to the RS and to BiH: in RTRS’s news programs, as previously noted, there is often a clear distinction between the two, as if the RS was not an entity of BiH, but almost a separate country. This suggestion is a staple of the station’s coverage, in a plethora of both explicit and implicit ways.
All in all, RTRS has proven to be the strongest media weapon being used to destabilize BiH and promote the separatist inclinations of the RS ruling class. Its importance to those in power also can be seen in the fact that despite its major financial troubles and debt, the RTRS was able to construct an entirely new HQ building in Banja Luka with the help of the entity government, and in close proximity to the RS government building itself. In contrast, BHRT and FTV, together with the public broadcaster of the Sarajevo Canton (TVSA), share the same building previously owned by the Socialist Republic of BiH’s public broadcaster, which was built in the 1970s and shelled and bombed during the Bosnian War. That one of the public broadcasters is thriving while others are barely surviving can be explained only through massive financial injections by the same government that it promotes and defends in the eyes of the public. This fact is especially striking when one recalls, as previously noted, that the RS is the poorest region in the country.
The Shift from Public to Private Ownership
Other ethno-national leaders have not shied away from attempting to similarly take control over the public media, or to gain a stake in private consortiums. One of the more obvious examples is the case of the Avaz company, comprising the most popular daily newspaper, Dnevni Avaz, several weekly magazines and a TV station, TV Alfa. Avaz is owned by Fahrudin Radončić, the founder and president of the Alliance for a Better Future (Stranka za Bolju Budućnost, SBB), a Bosniak party with a nominally reformist and technocratic agenda that simultaneously attempts to chip away at the SDA’s conservative-nationalist electorate. Although a media mogul first and a politician more recently, Radončić has used his daily to propagate the agenda of his party, as well as spread disinformation.
A prominent recent example this can be seen in the debunked claims of several articles ahead of the 2018 general elections depicting migrants passing through BiH en route to the countries of the EU as malevolent, violent or generally a security risk. Given the official stance of the government of the RS, where refugees and migrants are not permitted to enter at all, and the previously mentioned attempts to keep them out of HDZ BiH-dominated areas of the country, the xenophobia against this particularly vulnerable group has already been present in the public, and was further exacerbated by the SBB leader’s media outlets within the Bosniak ethno-national camp as well. In other words, the SBB leader used his media arm to promote the idea that ruling figures among the Bosniak community, in particular the SDA, had failed to protect their constituents from an invading menace, so they should accordingly shift their loyalties to the SBB which had, as in previous years, promised a “tsunami of justice”. It should also be noted that Radončić has long been linked to the Kosovar-Bosnian crime boss Naser Kelmendi, who was sentenced to six years in prison by a Pristina court in 2018 on a slew of drug-trafficking charges, and other underground figures (Radončić was eventually cleared of corruption charges). Once described as the “Bosnian Berlusconi”, Radončić is an example of a classic post-communist tycoon although one who has so far struggled to translate his media empire into significant political power.
Another particularly interesting outlet with ties to the Bosniak ethno-nationalist elites is Faktor/Stav. Originally reported to be owned by “Turkish investors”, Faktor, a daily, and Stav, a weekly, share the same staff and newsroom, and both quite blatantly side with the political stances of the SDA and its president, Bakir Izetbegović. Although it is impossible to prove that Izetbegović or other SDA officials personally direct the editorial line of either outlet, the SDA and Izetbegović are nevertheless the closest allies of Turkey and Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the region, suggesting that there is a definite common interest between the strongest Bosniak party and the Turkish owners of Faktor/Stav. Tangentially, we might observe here that this alliance is rooted in the fact that lacking an apparent supranational state like the Bosnian Serbs with Serbia and Bosnian Croats with Croatia, conservative Bosniaks have begun to look to their historical relationship with Turkey, a turn which has been warmly received and promoted by the “neo-Ottoman” aspirations of the regime in Ankara.
The most interesting intersection of public vs. private media interests in BiH, however, can be seen in the case of the Bosnian Croat community and their most powerful representative, the HDZ BiH. Decades-long demands for the creation of another public broadcaster or channel in the Croatian language have often been used as a political bargaining chip by the HDZ BiH and its leader Dragan Čović, its long-time leader and most ardent supporter of greater Croat autonomy in BiH. This appeal to an alleged under-representation is not necessarily based on facts, such as that none of the other existing public channels are specifically in Bosnian or Serbian, or that all public broadcasters, at least in their editorial guidelines, permit and promote the use of all three official languages, which also happen to be perfectly mutually understandable regional variants of the language formerly known as Serbo-Croatian, and which is spoken in four former Yugoslav republics (e.g. Serbia, Croatia, BiH, and Montenegro).
Disregarding this, as well as the constitutional rights of “others” (meaning, citizens of BiH not belonging to one of the three constitutive peoples, and who are thus a distinct and often disenfranchised minority in BiH), demands for a specific channel in Croatian seem to have nothing to do with the language itself, as much as with the fact that the HDZ BiH does not have full control over any of the existing public broadcasting channels. After failed attempts at taking control at BHRT, and repeated claims that the so-called “third channel” will become a reality in the near future, fifty-five businesses and individuals from Herzegovina with ties to the party have founded a new channel called Naša TV (‘Our TV’). This private TV channel with headquarters in Mostar focuses on relaying information solely related to the supranational Croatian identity — news from Croatia and Bosnian Croat-majority regions of BiH such as Western Herzegovina. This, in turn, happens to be another form of non-ethical journalism that is closer to propaganda in its purpose: by creating a mono-ethnic blindspot in its programming, Naša TV is the prime example of indirectly promoting separatist and irredentist politics based on supranational sentiment and furthers the idea of “all Croats in the same country”, which only further destabilizes the already fragile state of affairs in BiH.
Supranational spillover & the Russian factor
The supranational identities of two of BiH’s constituent peoples, Bosnian Croats and Bosnian Serbs, further affect the media landscape through the influence of media from neighbouring countries, Croatia and Serbia. Given that the same language with slight variants is spoken in all three countries, as well as that in many cases socio-political loyalties and thus trust among the populace as a whole is directly connected with their ethno-national identity, this spillover contributes to a general porousness of the border between information and disinformation in BiH and the region as a whole.
Both public broadcasters, HRT from Croatia and RTS from Serbia, as well as a plethora of private television stations, are widely distributed via cable providers in BiH. Although, in theory, this should add to the plurality of voices in the public space, in practice this means that Bosnian Croats are exposed to increasingly nationalist rhetoric particularly propagated via Croatia’s public broadcaster, which has in recent months even veered into the territory of Holocaust denial during its morning programme. On the other side of the border, Serbian TV channels, apart from, as certain reports claim, being directly or indirectly under the control of Serbia’s president Aleksandar Vučić and his Serbian Progressive Party (Srpska Napredna Stranka, SNS), tend to disseminate a form of crypto-Greater Serbian ideology where borders, visually and thematically, are often erased between what are perceived as “Serb territories” (i.e. Serbia, Kosovo, Montenegro and BiH). In terms of foreign policy and allies, it is the Serbian media who are the most likely to paint the West as the true “enemy of the people”, while at the same time, similarly to RTRS, promoting the idea of Russia and the Kremlin as “the Serbs’ Older Brother” and historical ally — albeit somewhat more subtly, given the sensitive nature of the see-saw game Vučić plays with both the EU and Russia. Nevertheless, there is a clear sentiment promoted across both RTRS and RTS that while BiH (i.e. the RS) and Serbia may be future EU members, their political, cultural, and spiritual perspective remain unshakably oriented towards Moscow.
The biggest source of this spillover, however, can be found online: ever since its founding in 2015, Sputnik News Serbia, a local branch of Russia’s state owned media group Rossiya Segodnya, has been publishing notoriously one-sided content aimed directly at those who identify with the Serbian supra-nation and its cause. Its specific interest in BiH’s RS and outright support of the current, Russia-friendly regime and its leader Milorad Dodik, has already been discussed. But the main issue with Sputnik Serbia’s spillover influence, from a media standpoint, are the common tactics of strengthening the entrenched belief in a still palpable “Greater Serbia” project, adding to the divisive atmosphere in the country and prompting separatist sentiments among conservative-nationalist Bosnian Serbs, and irredentist sentiments in Serbia.
An additional aspect of Sputnik’s influence is its negative and often partisan view on the region’s Euro-Atlantic integrations, with BiH’s NATO path a particular thorn in its side. BiH’s path to NATO has been blocked for the better part of the last decade by Bosnian Serb leaders, even as both the SNSD and RS opposition have just often explicitly signed off on relevant legislation that has brought BiH to the brink of MAP activation. While publicly peddling nationalist straw-men about the impossibility of Serb support for NATO (“which bombed us in the 90s”), all relevant political options among the Serb community in BiH have consistently shown their willingness to be brought on side regarding Atlantic integration in exchange for tangible political-financial support from the West (Dodik and the SNSD were outspoken supporters of NATO membership as late as 2010). A similar game is often played by the SNSD et al with regards to EU membership. But Sputnik, and domestic media which re-package their coverage, has, in a sense, radicalized the discourse around NATO in BiH and the region in line with the Kremlin’s own priorities. Arguably the most outspoken opponents of NATO enlargement in BiH and the Western Balkans as a whole are not so much Serb nationalist leaders, as they are domestic governments closely affiliated or exposed to Russian influence operations. Much as in Montenegro, those most committed to obstructing actual progress towards Atlantic enlargement are not local political actors per se, but locals under the direction of Kremlin operatives.
The Online Dimension
As one can observe, traditional media in BiH present a vast and diverse network of outlets only loosely adhering to the standards of the trade and mostly playing the role of glorified pulpits for various, almost exclusively ethno-national, political and ideological interests, as well as foreign actors with their own agendas. When it comes to online outlets, however, the situation is significantly worse, as we have already indicated with regards to Sputnik.
Aside from a small number of popular online news outlets with decades-long histories, such as Klix, a Sarajevo-based portal, and print media’s increased presence online, as in the case of Slobodna Bosna, another notable weekly-turned-portal, and several highly specialized investigative journalism portals like Žurnal and CIN, there have been at least two noticeable waves of portals with no visible owners and anonymous authors whose sole purpose is the dissemination of disinformation. One followed the general rise in disinformation against the West in 2014, reaching its peak in BiH around 2016; the other was more closely connected to the 2018 Bosnian elections and had a much more direct link to the various domestic political options. This latter wave was particularly enabled with the almost non-existent practice of registering and monitoring any online media outlets in the country.
Unlike traditional electronic media (radio and television), which have to adhere to the rulebook established by the Regulatory Agency for Communications (RAK), the online media landscape is left to self-regulate with the aid of the Council for Print and Online Media (VZŠ), which only has a semi-advisory role. Unlike RAK, which in its mandate has the provisions necessary to dole out financial penalties for any breach of its guidelines, VZŠ can only issue non-binding cease-and-desist decisions with no power to financially penalize those who breach its code of ethics. Also, while registration is mandatory for all electronic platforms of traditional media, no online outlet has to register prior to beginning its operations, thus allowing anyone to essentially anonymously create and run a “news portal”, or present its propaganda/disinformation outlet as a veritable journalistic endeavour.
This situation has created a need for proper debunking portals in BiH. But there is only one outlet, Raskrinkavanje, fully dedicated to pursuing and delegitimizing fake news, including their maintenance of a list of portals in breach of journalistic guidelines. However, Raskrinkavanje’s reach is limited, and quite illustratively, their staff have already suffered a serious number of threats by those behind these “disinformation factories”. In essence, media ethics professionals have been left with no tools to fight what has turned out to be a veritable plague of disinformation sources disguised as news portals, fuelled by both foreign and domestic political interests.
On the other hand, there are two distinct types of operations behind these projects: one type mostly has to do with the owner, who is usually the sole member of staff, trying to make a quick profit based on a large number of clicks. The number of clickbait portals have been steadily losing prominence compared to the other type, however, where, often glaringly, the purpose is to gain some sort of advantage for a single political actor or party that is quite obviously the architect of the project. That political parties do not shy away from running their own (disinformation) portals can be seen in the example of ‘Smeće vijesti’ (‘Trash News’), an alleged debunking portal officially announced by HDZ BiH right before the 2018 elections. In this particular case, the debunking was only superficial and targeted exclusively at Sarajevo-based portals which were deemed particularly critical of HDZ BiH’s policies, where the proof consisted of a red “Fake News” stamp plastered over what was an illegible screenshot of the article that the anonymous author(s) at ‘Smeće vijesti’ were allegedly debunking. This sort of delegitimization tactic of an otherwise trustworthy source of information, and the broader concept of fact-checking, constitutes an especially malign form of disinformation.
Another aspect of note regarding the overall online media climate in BiH is the general lack of a critical approach to disinformation by news professionals themselves. As reported in August 2018, despite that fact that Sputnik News has been labelled as a source of fake news by major international outlets and debunking professionals alike, the list of local media that uncritically relay Sputnik Serbia’s articles remains significant: RTRS, Alternativna televizija (ATV) from Banja Luka, Banja Luka’s main daily newspaper Nezavisne novine, the RS’s news agency Srna, as well as marginal, anonymously operated portals such as Iskra, Srbin.info, Vesti-online and others that constitute essentially the entirety of the media scene in the RS, ranging from publicly owned media to mainstream outlets, including purpose-built disinformation dissemination portals. Although the argument can be made that such editorial decisions are clearly being made following strict ethno-nationalist lines, as opposed to professional standards and practice, it is not unusual for other mainstream outlets, including those in the Federation, to similarly copy-paste news sourced from notorious disinformation peddlers without any meaningful due diligence exercised.
Ultimately, the reasons for such malpractice can be found in the aforementioned understaffed and underqualified newsrooms, a lack of editorial guidelines pertaining to fact-checking, as well as the editorial decision to prioritize quantity over quality, which seems to plague every single outlet in BiH today. This is also notable in the lack of an editorial presence in the comments sections of practically all outlets in BiH, where bots and trolls alike find their most fertile grounds. A peculiarity of BiH is that social networks as tools of dissemination of disinformation are not especially popular. Facebook dominates the social media in terms of popularity, with Twitter having only a marginal presence, but the respective media portals are still the most predominant sources of news. The comment sections of virtually all media in the country are dominated by bots and/or trolls behaviour, typified by constant inflammatory and divisive commenting on the basis of local ethno-sectarian cleavages, as well as more general reactionary bot/troll tropes (i.e. anti-feminism, anti-Semitism, the promotion of all manner of conspiracy theories etc). This, in turn, creates an extremely toxic media environment, all with the purpose of further dividing an already extremely fractured society, and to maintain a general atmosphere of hopelessness and desperation, that is at this point quite palpable in Bosnian society as a whole. If there was a single malign practice that should be pointed out in this report when it comes to interference in online media, the ability of trolls to sow discord and toxicity would certainly be it.
Conclusions
While this report has covered a significant amount of conceptual terrain, its thesis can be succinctly (re)established: Russia has emerged as an influential and malign outside factor in the domestic politics of BiH, through both media disinformation campaigns and political-security linkages to reactionary, domestic political actors, in particular the Serb nationalist SNSD and its long-time coalition partners in the Croat nationalist HDZ.
Owing to BiH’s already complex political arrangements, accounting for Russian influence in the country, and ascertaining the degree of instability which is actually caused by Moscow — rather than the Kremlin merely sponsoring domestic political adventurism — is at times difficult but not impossible, nor is it entirely necessary. Realistically, Russian influence operations in BiH, much as in the rest of the region, exist in a symbiotic relationship with domestic reactionary and revanchist political projects. This does not, however, take away from their potentially destructive effects, especially in a country as fragmented and volatile as BiH. If anything, the risks for BiH, the region, and the continent are only increased as a result.
Above all, Russia’s projections of its purported great power status are dangerous in BiH because they threaten to invite local elites to believe that they can count on Moscow’s patronage and support in the event of serious instability. Or, more to the point, that they should themselves begin to test the limits of what is permissible and possible in BiH and the region with Russia’s backing. And, indeed, since 2014 that is precisely what Milorad Dodik, in particular, has gone about doing: testing the limits of the permissible and the possible.
Today, for the first time since the creation of a unified armed forces in BiH in 2005–2006, there are parallel paramilitary and security structures operating in the country. Worse, unlike in the mid-2000s, there is no credible international deterrent force left in BiH. In the event that the Banja Luka government attempted some form of de facto secession, for instance, believing that it could win a sort of Transnistria-like status, financed in whole or in part by the Kremlin, it is very much an open question whether the international community would be capable of mustering any kind of meaningful reaction force before it would be a question of “new facts on the ground”.
Accordingly, responding to Russian activities in BiH requires a comprehensive strategy, but one primarily focused on addressing the chief source of Moscow’s local influence: the endemic rot at the heart of BiH’s Dayton constitutional regime. The international community, and the Atlantic alliance in particular, must renew their efforts, as they have recently successfully done in Macedonia, to revitalize credible reform efforts in BiH, with a focus on strengthening the rule of law and combating corruption, increasing democratic accountability, and rationalizing the country’s overall administrative and constitutional layout. But the key objective, at least in the short term, should be securing NATO membership for the Sarajevo government.
This move would both counter Moscow’s primary interest in BiH and possibly deal a definitive blow to Russia’s Western Balkan operations as a whole. After all, with the region’s geopolitical centre ensconced in NATO, even with Serbia and Kosovo on the outside, Russia would be reduced to the political margins, even if Serbia is the region’s most populous state, and even if the question of Kosovo’s international status appears destined to remain unresolved for the foreseeable future. BiH’s centrality in this regard cannot be overstated, nor how relatively conservative amounts of international engagement can still pay massive political dividends in BiH, as they already have in Macedonia.
If, on the other hand, Russian influence is allowed to grow in this country, and to further aggravate its political stagnation and deterioration, then the final cost to both the people of BiH and the Atlantic community may be far heavier than many are presently prepared to admit. In the 1990s, the international community allowed BiH to become the victim of local reactionary regimes, a sin which it has attempted to remedy for the better part of the last three decades. The international community cannot allow the massive political and financial investments it has made in BiH since the signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement to be so easily undone by provincial strongmen or their new-found foreign benefactors. If it does, the fault will be its own.
More about the authors
Jasmin Mujanović’s first book Hunger and Fury: The Crisis of Democracy in the Balkans (Hurst Publishers & Oxford University Press, 2018) examines the persistence of authoritarian and illiberal forms of governance in the Western Balkans since the end of the Yugoslav Wars. His publications also include peer-reviewed articles in top-flight academic journals, chapters in numerous edited volumes, policy reports for Freedom House, the European Council on Foreign Relations, and the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, as well as popular analyses in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, Al Jazeera, openDemocracy, and a host of other media. He has a prominent social media presence and has made appearances for international television and radio programs on Al Jazeera, CBC Radio, Huffington Post Live, Voice of America, as well as numerous Balkan media outlets.
Aleksandar Brezar, as senior contributor for Analiziraj, a Bosnian media ethics and anti-disinformation portal, authors the weekly column “Fake and Spin,” dealing with debunking and analyzing both manipulation in and by the media, and attempts at political spin by domestic and regional politicians. He was an advisor and contributor on several documentaries for PBS, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Al Jazeera English. His work has also appeared in a variety of domestic and international outlets, including Start BiH, Istinomjer, Balkanist, Balkan Insight, Mediacentar and Analiziraj. For his investigative work at BHRT on illegal construction condoned by municipal heads throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, in 2017 he was awarded the inaugural Balkan Factchecking Award, awarded by Istinomjer and Poynter Institute. He has also won a number of awards in other fields, including two European awards for Preservation of Cultural Heritage Europa Nostra 2016, for his participation in organizing the “Ja sam muzej” campaign for the reopening of the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The views expressed here do not necessarily represent the views of the Integrity Initiative.
