The West is trying to illegally entice Sarajevo to act on making foreign policy decisions without any consideration fro the position of the Republic of Srpska, which is a most flagrant violation of the Dayton Agreement, said Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia Sergey Lavrov in an exclusive interview with the Radio Television of the Republic of Srpska.

He stated that the West cannot even imagine that a country in the Balkans could be independent, or that a politician in the Balkans could be independent, because the West is used to using “various Christian Schmidts to manipulate everybody and blackmail everybody and impose ultimatums”.

“The West is seeking to use the Bosniaks to rob the peoples in BIH of their identity and turn Serbs, Croatians and Bosniaks into some sort of a civil society, as they call it. What that actually is is a demand to forget their roots, their culture and their tradition, for the singular purpose that the West achieve its geopolitical aims in the Balkans. And that really is a criminal policy,” said Lavrov.

Sergey Lavrov said that the Serbian Member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina Milorad Dodik is not doing anything that is not in line with the Dayton Agreement, and that he is virtually the only one fighting for Dayton against the aggressive attacks of the West on that document.

Lavrov pointed out that it is truly very disturbing what is being done to Dodik, seeing as he is essentially one of the few politicians that are objectively fighting for Dayton principles.

As an example, he pointed out that the West lied about not expanding the NATO, fulfilling the Minsk Agreement on Donbas, creating the Association of Serbian Municipalities in Kosovo, the same way that is is lying about being devoted to the Dayton Agreement.

In fact, he said, as part of the so-called electoral process reform, the West is doing everything it can in order to force the Croatians to accept that, like before, they will be represented by Bosniaks or people who are completely politically aligned with the Bosniaks in the common institutions of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Lavrov pointed out the alleged exclusivity of the west and their habit of constantly lying in order to justify their own lawlessness, as well as that there really is a notion of the so-called High Representative.

He reminded that the Executive Board of the Peace Implementation Council made a decision back in 2006 that it was time to close the “little shop” and disband the position of the High Representative.

“But, using various pretexts, as a rule artificial and made up, that process went on and on, and when the previous High Representative’s term was up, we said that it was time to switch to a higher policy of respect towards Bosnia and Herzegovina, it has after all been an independent country for several decades and it is still being run by some sort of an appointed representative, who takes priority over all state organs of Bosnia and Herzegovina,” said Lavrov.

Lavrov added that the response from the West has been that this cannot happen under any circumstances, with the aim to keep Bosnia and Herzegovina in a state of tension and not let it go, but he pointed out that there are still those, such as the Republic of Srpska, who do not wish to submit.

“They want to subjugate it, so they named Schmidt from Germany, with the most flagrant breach of procedure, which means that the West, as before, wants to manipulate Bosnia and Herzegovina for its own interests and turn it into another base for NATO expansion in the Balkans. Schmidt has no legitimacy, but I have no doubt that the West will attempt to create more lawlessness,” said Lavrov.