Ab de Buck & Caspar ten Dam

31 March 2022, Dordrecht, the Netherlands 

Russia has invaded Ukraine – a horrible war has begun. It still receives little attention, but similar violence threatens to break out in Bosnia. Nationalist Bosnian-Serb politicians are working on a unilateral secession of their dominated part of the country, Sprska. They also seek to set up their own army. The Russian invasion of Ukraine will further spur them to continue their path toward secession by force if necessary. The EU is in a position to stop this, but is currently allowing it to run its course.

Bosnia has enjoyed a fragile peace since the devastating war of 1992-1995. The Bosnian-Serb leader Milorad Dodik has now placed a bomb under it. He is working to ensure that the Serb-dominated part or entity of the country (Srpska) will secede from the Bosnian state this spring, even with its own army.[1] In doing so, he receives active support from Serbia and Russia. The decision to seek or at least threaten secession violates the Bosnian constitution. But it constitutes above all a dangerous development. Please note: this is not just about a population group that seeks to peacefully secede from a country, such as when Flanders were to separate itself from Belgium. The roots of the call for secession of Srpska lie in the war back in the 1990s. During and through this war, extreme-nationalist Bosnian Serbs strived for an ethnically pure state: a state exclusively reserved for ethnic Serbs. All others were systematically expelled, raped and murdered. This ethnic cleansing and accompanying brutalities led to the mass murder of more than 8,000 men and boys from Srebrenica in July 1995, a sad and horrible low point in the war.

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Caspar ten Dam & Ab de Buck

4 October 2022, Leiden, the Netherlands  

One of our biggest fears earlier this year – as mentioned in our article on Bosnian Serb secession plans in Bosnia [1] – has come true: on February 24, Russia invaded Ukraine. In a previous article [2] we argued for a) massive, coordinated military aid to Ukraine, including long-range weapons; b) allowing Ukraine to retake all Russian-occupied territories; and c) accelerated accession of Ukraine to the European Union after it obtained EU membership candidate status last June. Naturally we have called for maximum humanitarian and economic aid to Ukraine as well – and effective sanctions against Russia, including a total ban on Russian gas purchases; if we get countries like India on board, so much the better. Here we make further proposals on how one could stop and undo Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, and how to deal with the nuclear threat and military mobilisation recently proclaimed by Russian President Vladimir Putin. These proposals are as follows:

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Caspar ten Dam & Ab de Buck                    

Update 19 September 2022, Leiden, the Netherlands  

One of our worst fears earlier this year – as mentioned in our article on Bosnian-Serb separatist plans in Bosnia [1] – has come to pass: on February 24th Russia invaded Ukraine.

We have anticipated the fierce, smart and thereby effective Ukrainian resistance stymieing and even reversing Russian advances toward the capital Kiev and other places s however. Thus we have predicted that “despite the military disparities, the Ukrainian armed forces would not be a pushover if Putin does decide to invade Ukraine.” [2] The until recently slow progress at best by heavily concentrated Russian and pro-Russian forces in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region – particularly in the Luhansk and Donetsk provinces partially controlled by pro-Russian breakaway republics since the preceding war in 2014 – should surprise no one either. Indeed the entire invasion is “about to run out of steam”, according to Richard Moore, the head of Britain’s foreign intelligence service MI6.[3] Actually, Ukrainian forces are now (re)taking the initiative through successful counteroffensives toward Kherson in the south and into the Donbas region from Kharkov in the north. These setbacks clearly have surprised Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, who masterminded and ordered the invasion of Ukraine with high ambitions of territorial conquest and regime change.

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