Milorad Dodik, the pro-Russian Serb leader of Bosnia, has been sentenced to a year in prison and banned from politics for six years over separatist actions.
A Sarajevo court handed down the historic ruling on Wednesday after a year-long trial, finding Dodik guilty of defying the top international envoy overseeing Bosnia’s fragile peace.
But Dodik wasn’t in court to hear his fate. Instead, he rejected the verdict, vowing he wouldn’t obey the ruling and threatening “radical measures”—including a full breakaway of the Serb-run Republika Srpska from Bosnia.
His separatist threats reignited fears of new turmoil in the Balkans, where the 1992-95 ethnic war killed 100,000 people and displaced millions. The U.S.-brokered Dayton Agreement ended the bloodshed, but Dodik’s defiance is testing its limits nearly three decades later.
