There are signs that the hard-won peace in Bosnia is seriously faltering, so Europe and the United States must act soon to keep Bosnia from going off the rails, a former CNN correspondent Frida Ghitis wrote in a piece for The Washington Post.

The columnist with experience of reporting on wars in the region warned that ethnic passions in Bosnia are rising “amid a broader wave of nationalism across the continent, one ominously coinciding with a Russian campaign to undermine Western-friendly governments.”

She pointed out Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik as a figure “at the heart of the turmoil”, who defies the central government and is drawing closer to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“Dodik has been travelling frequently to Moscow, and Russian emissaries have been visiting Banja Luka, the seat of the Bosnian Serb region,” she wrote, quoting Dodik as saying, “True friends such as the Russian Federation and its President Vladimir Putin have helped us to clearly set our goals, get back self-confidence and fight for our original rights.”

Ghitis also mentioned a recent “massive rally” of Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Bosnian capital city of Sarajevo and development of the ties between Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) with the Bosniak’s Party of Democratic Action (SDA).

“In short, Bosnia needs urgent attention from democratic countries. Otherwise, the decades since Dayton will have amounted to a resting period between Balkan wars,” concluded Ghitis in a text she titled Is Bosnia heading back to the dark old days of the 1990s?.