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The conference in Banja Luka in November dedicated to the 30th anniversary of the Dayton Peace Agreement, held under the auspices of the Russia-based, US-sanctioned Aleksey Gorchakov Foundation, began with a session addressing the issue of the origin and existence of the Bosniaks as a people and ended with a denial of the Srebrenica genocide.
Alexander Nadzharov, an analyst at the Centre for Mediterranean Studies in Moscow, the co-author of a report by Russian researchers that was presented at the conference, took the opportunity to deny the Srebrenica genocide in his address.
“There has been a consistent policy of blaming Republika Srpska for the so-called genocide,” Nadzharov said.
Diplomats, scientists, professors and analysts at the Banja Luka gathering agreed that Bosnia and Herzegovina’s international peace overseer, the High Representative, along with Western and European countries, are destroying the Dayton Agreement. Russia, on the other hand, is a force for peace, they are convinced – a stance emphasised by Yuriy Pichugin, a representative of the Russian embassy in Sarajevo.
“The disruptive factor is the illegitimate High Representative, who is now, unfortunately, introducing numerous reforms to the constitutional framework of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and we, as you recently saw at the UN Security Council, firmly support Republika Srpska’s efforts to maintain the constitutional and legal framework of the Dayton Peace Agreement and to preserve the constitutional powers of all three constituent peoples, and, of course, the two entities [Republika Srpska and the Federation],” Pichugin said.
He was supported by his compatriots from Russia who worked on the report with Nadzharov.
“We fully agree with the official position of the Russian Federation that Office of the High Representative has become a disruptive factor that has led to more disintegration than integration than was the case 20 years ago,” said Ekatarina Entina of the Academy of Sciences in Moscow, one of the authors of the report.
The airing of such claims at the Gorchakov Foundation event came as no surprise. The foundation’s founder is former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. As well as a few oligarchs and diplomats, Russia’s foreign minister Sergey Lavrov sits on the Foundation’s board. The Foundation is close to Vladimir Putin, and when it was established 15 years ago, its goal was to spread Russian propaganda through publishing, providing scholarships to young people, and connecting pro-Russian actors with each other.
Three years ago, Denis Tereschenko, a researcher at the European University in Florence, published a study and a book on the influence of the Gorchakov Foundation in spreading Russian propaganda and how, through its activities, it tries to reach European political circles and enhance perceptions of the policies pursued by Putin.
“When we investigated these organisations, especially the Gorchakov Fund, because it is so small, it seems like it’s not very dangerous since it doesn’t have a large audience. But then, if we consider the fact that they are actually working on establishing a community friendly towards Russia, which then spreads ideas more widely, and there are also people working at universities and in the media and teaching who are becoming more favourable towards Russia, I would think of this as a long-term investment,” Tereschenko explained to Detektor Magazine.
The report, published in English, Serbian and Russian, was divided into three categories: society, the economy, and politics. Through it run topics such as film in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bosniaks playing the victim, the exodus of Sarajevo’s Serbs, the problematisation of state symbols and the coat of arms of the Bosnian medieval dynasty, a census in the early 20th century, the post-Dayton economy, and, finally, the Office of the High Representative.
The Minister of Internal Affairs of Republika Srpska, Zeljko Budimir, said that Russian scholars were defending the Dayton Peace Agreement and the position of Republika Srpska.
“A few days ago, you saw how significant the Russian address to the United Nations Security Council was,” Budimir told media at the event, which included the Russian state-run television company RT (formerly Russia Today).
Two days afterwards, the Aleksey Gorchakov Foundation conference was held at the Russian House in Belgrade, with considerably more participants than in Banja Luka – politicians and diplomats from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, and Russia. The deputy speaker of Russia’s Duma, Pyotr Tolstoy, who has also been sanctioned for supporting the Russian invasion of Ukraine, joined the conference via video link.
“Thirty years ago, our Russian Federation failed to do what we had to do regarding our Serbian brothers. I am sure that such a situation will not happen again,” Tolstoy said.
“Russia is becoming stronger every year, and the possibility of establishing a new world order, which is not based on the famous Western rules, but on respect for states, sovereignty and the freedom of all peoples, will also spread to the Balkan region,” he added.
In his address to the event, the Russian ambassador to Belgrade, who also served a term in Sarajevo, Alexandar Bocan-Harchenko, stated during his speech that Western countries had destroyed the Dayton Agreement and described the High Representative as a problematic factor for Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Finally, went on to call out what he described as NATO’s “aggression” against the Bosnian Serbs before the signing of the Dayton Agreement and called the Srebrenica genocide a “provocation”.
“This [the bombing of Bosnian Serb forces] was carried out by NATO using the most advanced artillery at that time and other aviation systems … All of this was accompanied by provocations, the greatest of which was Srebrenica, as well as a series of others,” Bocan-Harchenko said.
RT, a media outlet controlled by the Russian government that also has a service in the Balkans, covered the conferences in Banja Luka and Belgrade and dedicated two shows to them, highlighting Russian support in preserving Republika Srpska, the reports emphasised. A former member of the wartime presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Nenad Kecmanovic, appeared in one of the one-and-a-half-hour shows, openly calling for the dissolution of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
