The Hungarian government's meddling in Bosnia has lead to some of its leaders calling for the departure of Hungarian soldiers

There are a few hundred Hungarian soldiers serving in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but how much longer they will stay is an open question given that some members of the country's presidency have judged that the Hungarian government is openly interfering in Bosnian internal affairs. This is why, according to several newspapers, Željko Komšić, the Croat member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina has informed the summoned Hungarian ambassador that he would initiate the withdrawal of the Hungarian EUFOR contingent from the peacekeeping forces in the country.

While the world focused on the heated Oval Office debate between US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and the shocking moves of the new US administration, events of at least equal importance have been unfolding in the Balkans – which are most likely directly linked to the events in the US.

Bosnia not wanting to see Hungarian soldiers and police in the country is all the more poignant because Major General László Sticz's mandate as EUFOR commander in Bosnia-Herzegovina ended on 21 January this year. The EUFOR Althea military mission is the third biggest in the history of the European Union, and Sticz was the first Hungarian soldier to lead the EU peacekeeping operation. The number of Hungarian troops was increased to almost 400 in January last year. In addition, over the past year, the Hungarian contingent has also provided air transport and the Air MEDEVAC, i.e. the medical air evacuation capability.

The EU mission would only intervene if the Bosnian police were unable to maintain peace. Sticz did, however, acknowledge that the situation could escalate at any time, just as it did in Kosovo last May. "That's why an international military force – which must be impartial and trustworthy – is important. And if necessary, it must also act as a deterrent," Sticz said in a previous interview.

"The Russian-Ukrainian war has had an impact on all of Europe, including our country. Our goal is to prevent a new hotspot from developing in our neighbourhood, so the stability and security of the Western Balkans is of paramount military and national security interest. This is why Hungary has been stationing significant forces in both KFOR and EUFOR" – General Gábor Böröndi, Chief of the General Staff of the Hungarian Defence Forces, said in Sarajevo last December, on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the launch of EUFOR Althea.

Except, it is precisely the fact that the Hungarian government has for some time now been an active player in the country's internal affairs, not in military but in political terms, that poses a threat to Bosnia's stability.

“We have become an active player in the processes”

"In recent years and months, we have defined and implemented a Balkans policy in which we have become an active player in the region, countering Western efforts towards destabilisation", Levente Magyar, State Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said at a press conference in Banja Luka on Monday. He held the press conference along with the recently convicted Bosnian Serb President Milorad Dodik, who enjoys the support of Hungarian Prime Minister VIktor Orbán and Russia.

Levente Magyar said that in his opinion, it is not the Bosnian Serbs who are the destabilising factor, but "the insensitive Western colonial powers which are working to break up this country".

While it has consistently stood by Dodik in recent years, the Hungarian government has previously repeatedly voiced its support for Bosnia and Herzegovina's swift accession to the EU. Orbán also touched on this when he visited Sarajevo in the summer of 2023. "Hungary is a committed supporter of Bosnia and Herzegovina's EU accession. Although the process is difficult due to the complexity of the state structure of Bosnia and Herzegovina, we will provide all the support we can to accelerate the process under the circumstances," Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó posted on his Facebook page last November, also while visiting Sarajevo.

On Monday, Levente Magyar eventually arrived in Banja Luka, the seat of the Republika Srpska (RS), although his plane had previously been denied permission to land in the country. "I am firmly convinced that the military plane came from Hungary to provide some kind of support to Milorad Dodik and the clique gathered around him to destroy Bosnia and Herzegovina. My refusal to consent to the flyover/landing of the military aircraft has put me under enormous pressure from both the international community and domestic mediators over the past three days," Bosnia and Herzegovina's Defense Minister Zukan Helez wrote in a Facebook post.

"State Secretary for Foreign Affairs Levente Magyar was due to travel to Sarajevo and Banja Luka for official meetings on 3 March. As the Bosnian government did not grant permission for the airplane to enter the country’s airspace, only the visit to Banja Luka could be fitted into the available timeframe. We continue to look for an opportunity to hold consultations in Sarajevo", the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade commented.

In reaction to Magyar's statement at the press conference, a member of the Bosnian Presidency summoned Hungarian Ambassador Krisztián Pósa. According to local news outlets Klix and N1, he was told that in the future, Bosnia and Herzegovina would not allow Hungarian military and police units to enter the country. In addition, the Bosnian leadership has also indicated that they will initiate the removal of the Hungarian contingent of the EUFOR peacekeeping mission, expressing particular concern about the statement made by Levente Magyar that in the event of a conflict, Hungary would intervene in Bosnian events.

According to the Bosnian defense minister, who has refused to allow Magyar's plane to enter the country’s airspace, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has been consistently helping Dodik undermine the constitutional order in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The defense minister also criticized the recent presence of members of the Hungarian Counter-Terrorism Center (TEK) in the country. According to TEK, the 70-strong task force was there for training purposes as part of an international police cooperation programme.

The presence of the TEK has been widely linked to the sentencing of Milorad Dodik to a prison term in the first instance last Wednesday. The Bosnian Serb leader, who is on good terms with the Hungarian government, was sentenced to 1 year in prison and banned from holding public office for 6 years, but the sentence is not final. He had been accused of refusing to take into account the decisions of High Representative Christian Schmidt, who oversees the Bosnian state structures.

It is clear that the presence of the TEK in Bosnia and Herzegovina was seen by many as a political message, a show of force behind Dodik. This, and Levente Magyar's statement, have led to Bosnia wanting to practically kick the Hungarian police and soldiers out of the country.

The situation is particularly grim in light of the fact that Hungary has been one of the most active contributors to the international peacekeeping missions in Bosnia and Herzegovina since the adoption of the Dayton Peace Agreement in 1995.

The Dayton Agreement was designed to end the three-and-a-half-year war in Bosnia and facilitate a post-conflict political settlement. The warring parties agreed to peace and to the establishment of a sovereign state, Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is made up of two parts: the Republika Srpska, populated mainly by Serbs, and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, populated mainly by Croats and Bosniaks. In addition, there is the ethnically mixed Brčko District, which does not belong to either entity. The functioning of Bosnia and Herzegovina as a whole, and the enforcement of the Dayton Agreement, is overseen by a High Representative, appointed by the international community, who is not a Bosnian citizen.

The peacekeeping force must be impartial

Bosnia and Herzegovina is indeed a powder keg where the stoking of tensions could easily lead to another war in the Balkans. As previously reported, the country still bears the scars of the terrible civil war, landmines have not been cleared everywhere, and the remains of the victims of that war are often found buried under playgrounds and football pitches. The Serb, Croat and Bosnian communities all mutually and simultaneously hate each other and the country too, which is shown in the appalling pace at which depopulation is taking place.

Between 1995 and 2004, under NATO's leadership, the bloodshed was brought to an end and the Balkan country did not slip back into war, although this required a 60 000-strong force. Bosnia had already decided in 2005 that it wanted to become a member of NATO and the EU, and at that time the region was not yet characterised by anti-Western sentiment.

However, Russia has been suspicious of Bosnia's potential Western integration from the get-go and began to work on thwarting a future NATO and EU membership years ago. In addition to political stability, integration would require that ethnic tensions and corruption not hamper the functioning of an already complicated state structure. Milorad Dodik is not exactly the patron saint of the fight against corruption either: similarly to the Hungarian Prime Minister, his family has become quite wealthy in recent years.

Some don't like a status quo

As leader of the Serbian Independent Social Democrats (SNSD), Dodik has been in power since 2006 at the head of the autonomous Republika Srpska and has a well-established position. In this time, a fairly strong anti-NATO and anti-Western constituency has evolved in the entity, which accounts for roughly 49 percent of the country, and is led by the pro-Russian Dodik. Under Dodik, the Bosnian Serb Republic has also become very close with Serbia. In case of any legal action against Dodik, he immediately sees it as an attack against the Serbs, which makes him very similar to the former Serbian President Slobodan Milošević, who died in 2006.

Hungarian Prime Minister Orbán has portrayed Dodik as the guarantor of stability in the region, even though for more than a decade, the SNSD leader has been consistently calling for the break-up of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

According to the US Treasury Department, Dodik has undermined the institutions of Bosnia and Herzegovina by calling for the transfer of state powers and establishing parallel institutions in the Republika Srpska. The US authorities also allege that Dodik has abused his position in order to enrich himself and his family, and that he has steered government contracts in Republika Srpska to companies linked to him and his son Igor.

It was for this reason that the Americans, and later the British, put him on their sanctions list. In response, Dodik turned to Moscow for help and has regularly insulted US officials. For example, he called the former US ambassador, Michael Murphy, an idiot, a ''miserable human being'', a ''diplomatic disgrace'' and even said he would like to get into a fistfight with him.

A new world order with new opportunities?

In the background, Dodik is now lobbying Washington to lift the sanctions imposed on him. Now that Donald Trump is back in the White House, Dodik hopes to win support from the US government, ease sanctions and advance his efforts towards the ethnic division of the country.

It is likely that Orbán was also emboldened by the turnaround in US policy and decided to step up the pace in the Balkans and align himself even more closely with Dodik.

Dodik also saw the change in Washington as important. Even back in December 2013, he said that if Trump were to win the presidential election, he would not hesitate to declare the independence of the Bosnian Serb Republic. After his conviction in the first instance last Wednesday, Dodik declared that "as of today, there is no more Bosnia and Herzegovina". He added that he needed the support of the people and would go "all the way".

In addition to Orbán, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić has also stood by Dodik. The Serbian leader travelled to Banja Luka shortly after the conviction was announced and expressed his support for Dodik. Shortly before that, on 17 February, both Vučić and Dodik were in Budapest for a meeting with Orbán.

Meanwhile, Dodik invited Trump's former lawyer, former New York mayor and disbarred lawyer Rudy Giuliani, to Banja Luka. Giuliani's visit took everyone by surprise, but the purpose is clear: Dodik wanted to send a message to Trump that it was the Biden administration and the "deep state" intrigue that was trying to destroy him.

"You and President Trump understand better than anyone the ruthless nature of the Deep State and how far they will go to attack their political opponents," Dodik wrote in his invitation to Giuliani, which the former mayor later shared on social media. Trump's former attorney gave a speech in Banja Luka wearing a cap with Make Srpska Great Again written on it, and then handed Dodik a baseball cap with the inscription Make America Great Again.

Dodik's two foreign allies, Viktor Orbán and Aleksandar Vučić are also building on the same deep state narrative when saying that following Trump's victory, Serbia, Slovakia and Hungary have become targets, because the "global network" has retreated to Brussels and is trying to influence the region's politics from there. According to the Hungarian Prime Minister, Tuesday's riots in the Serbian parliament involving smoke grenades, flares and egg-throwing, which lead to several injuries – are also a sign that global forces are not shying away from destabilisation.

Close to Moscow

Although Bosnia and Herzegovina has been a candidate for EU membership, not much has happened until last March, when starting real negotiations came within reach. At the time, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced that they would propose opening EU accession talks with Bosnia, because they felt the country had made more progress as a candidate in just under a year than it had in a decade.

However, of the three constituent nations (Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats), only the Bosniaks and Croats are enthusiastic about this, while the Serbs hate Western organisations – which they consider enemies – especially NATO, but also the EU – which is mainly the result of Dodik's policies. At the end of 2022, a poll cited by Foreign Policy found that 58 percent of Bosniaks and 52 percent of Croats favoured pro-EU and pro-Western policies, while 69 percent of Bosniaks and 77 percent of Croats would welcome joining NATO, compared with only 8 percent of Serbs.

In addition, the charges brought against Dodik by the Bosnian Federal Prosecutor's Office have led to his prosecution, which was welcomed by the Croats and Bosniaks, who see the Bosnian Serb leader as the gravedigger of a united country, but the Serbs were of course outraged by the legal proceedings.

Dodik has three important allies: Vladimir Putin of Russia, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. In international politics, both Vučić and Orbán are regarded as pro-Russian, but of the three, Dodik is closest to Putin. So much so that Dodik, who considers himself an ally of Hungary's pro-peace prime minister, supported Russia's invasion of Ukraine and is Putin's most important ally in the Balkans. Dodik decorated Putin with an award, and subsequently gave the same award to Orbán. The West also saw this as clear provocation.

Which is not surprising, given that Vučić and Orbán's meddling in the Balkans is not in the interest of the West, and certainly not of NATO, but is quite helpful to the Russians. The greater the turmoil in the Balkans and the more ethnic conflicts escalate, the further Bosnia and Herzegovina will be from NATO and the EU.

But why is it in Orbán's interest to pursue a foreign policy in the Balkans which also benefits Russia, and why is he doing all this with allies who are pro-Russian and whose political moves favour the Kremlin? There are no clear answers to this, only potential explanations. What is certain is that Russia does not want Bosnia to become a member of either NATO or the EU, and Dodik is doing everything in his power to ensure that this does not happen.

This is why one possible explanation is that by supporting Dodik, Orbán is seeking to curry favour with Putin while strengthening his political alliance with similar illiberal forces in the region. As Balkan Insight previously reported, when Orbán came to power in 2010, he envisaged a "virtual unification of the nation" through which he would extend his influence to all the Hungarian-inhabited territories beyond the borders that were annexed from Hungary under the post-World War I peace treaty.

The other explanation is that Orbán started building alliances in the Balkans so that in the event of a future EU membership, he would already have members indebted to him. He is also seeking to gain economic influence in the region, which partly explains his meddling in the Balkans, although less so why he is willing to engage in conflict over it.

We understand that years ago, well before the start of the Russian-Ukrainian war, when speaking to leaders in the interior ministry, Orbán outlined a strategy at a 'briefing' which would somewhat explain what we see happening now. In this speech, the Prime Minister argued that the EU as we know it today would ultimately end, Ukraine would be taken over by Russia, the world order would be upended and the cards in Central and Eastern Europe would be reshuffled. He said that this transformation would open up opportunities for Hungary, which it must be able to capitalise on.

If this is indeed the strategy Orbán has been building on, his calculations have so far proven partly correct. Although due to Ukrainian resistance and Western Support, Russia was unable to quickly take over Ukraine and turn it into a puppet state after the invasion of 24 February 2022, Trump's election victory and his statements since then have given a strong chance to a peace agreement favourable to the Kremlin.

With every day that passes, it seems that the world order as we have known it is changing.

If the United States stops playing the role of the world's policeman, while the international organisations are simultaneously being hollowed out, nationalist forces that could challenge previous agreements could find themselves in a position to take over. One of these is Dodik.

Would they redraw the map of the Balkans?

Obviously, the fact that some believe that the dismantling of Bosnia and Herzegovina would only be the beginning of a process that would end up redrawing the map of the entire Balkans is not making this whole story any better.

In the spring of 2021, the Slovenian newspaper Necenzurirano published a mysterious document that outlined a plan for a radical redrawing of the borders of the states that had replaced the former Yugoslavia, and included the creation of a Greater Serbia and a Greater Albania, a bigger Croatia and a Bosnia that would shrink into insignificance. The plan published by the paper would fundamentally rewrite the rules of the Dayton peace treaty signed following the civil war of the early nineties, because instead of the current multi-ethnic states, it would call for the creation of nation states.

This plan would also involve the de facto carving up of Bosnia and Herzegovina: the Serb-populated part of the country, the Republika Srpska would be annexed to Serbia, while the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the other member of the state would also be cut up: the predominantly Croat-populated western Herzegovina would be integrated into Croatia, and the remaining part would become a purely Bosnian state with an exit to the Mediterranean. In addition, the north-western, Serb-inhabited tip of Kosovo would be annexed to Serbia in exchange for the most south-eastern part of Serbia, which is inhabited by Albanians. Kosovo would then be merged with Albania, with the Albanian-inhabited parts of Montenegro and northern Macedonia also being added to the new state.

According to press reports at the time, Janez Janša, who was then the Slovenian Prime Minister, forwarded the plan to the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, who initially acknowledged having seen the document but later denied it. Even more interesting is the fact that Croatian and Bosnian newspapers reported at the time that the main propagator of the plan, along with Vučić and Janša, was Viktor Orbán.