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What's going wrong in the Balkans?

Serb politician Milorad Dodik has threatened to pull out of Bosnia's state institutions.

It鈥檚 been more than two decades since the war in Bosnia ended. It remains one of the darkest chapters in modern European history and cost over 100,000 lives. Since the Dayton Agreement was reached in 1995 a fragile peace has held, but last month the international community's chief representative there - Christian Schmidt - warned that conflict might return and the country is in danger of breaking up. Bosnia-Herzegovina's senior ethnic Serb politician, Milorad Dodik, has threatened to pull the territory he governs inside Bosnia out of state-level institutions including the army. The issue that drove so much of the war - Serb nationalism - now appears to be on the rise across the Western Balkans. Serbia has deployed armoured vehicles and aeroplanes along its border with Kosovo and is accused of stoking religious tensions in neighbouring Montenegro. So how dangerous is this moment in Balkans history? Are the EU and the US doing enough to diffuse tensions? And how much of the blame can be laid at the feet of Serbia鈥檚 ally Russia?

Ritula Shah is joined by a panel of experts.
Producers: Junaid Ahmed and Paul Schuster.

Available now

49 minutes

Last on

Sat 11 Dec 2021 00:06GMT

Contributors

Alida Vra膷i膰 - Co-founder and head of the Bosnia-based thinktank Populari

Ivan Vejvoda - Head of the Europe鈥檚 Future programme at the Vienna-based academic institution The Institute for Human Sciences (IWM)

Charles Kupchan - Formerly Director for European Affairs on Bill Clinton鈥檚 National Security Council, Senior Director for European Affairs during the Obama administration 鈥 now a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and Professor of International Affairs at Georgetown University

Also featuring 鈥

Milorad Dodik - Bosnian Serb聽political leader

Vesna Pusi膰 - Former Croatian First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign and European Affairs

Photo

A man walks past a Serb nationalist mural reading 鈥楴ever Surrender鈥 over a map of Kosovo in North Mitrovica on October 24, 2020. Mitrovica is divided between a Kosovo-Albanian and a Kosovo-Serb area. Credit: Pierre Crom / Getty Images.

Broadcasts

  • Fri 10 Dec 2021 10:06GMT
  • Sat 11 Dec 2021 00:06GMT

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