Serbs survived owing to their unity in the historic aspirations for freedom, and today they have two states – Serbia and the Republika Srpska (RS), said Milorad Dodik, the President of RS, Bosnia's semi-autonomous, Serb-dominated entity.

Speaking in the northern town of Modrica on Sunday Dodik said there was a permanent intention throughout history to separate Serbs.

“After getting free from Turks, the Austro-Hungarians were inhabiting Bosniaks along the Drina River, only to separate Serbs and call us Bosnian or Croatian and, imagine, to tell Serbian Serbs we were not one people but that we were separated, detached, diminished and lessened, so they could manipulate us easier and they almost halved us through history and wars,” said Dodik in his speech at a ceremony marking a military operation from the 1900s.

“The sufferings were enormous, many of our fellow nationals were killed only because they were Serbs, many were killed only because they believed in the Serb Orthodox church or because they had a patron saint,” Dodik underlined.

According to him, Serbs never jeopardized the freedom of Bosniaks, Croats or Slovenians but they were all integrated into political systems, after which they slowly took over the authority and defined their national policies, which eventually led to the fall of Yugoslavia.

The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) broke up in the early 1990s after its republics one by one declared independence. Nationalist rhetoric became heated on all sides, which eventually led to armed conflicts, first in Croatia and then in Bosnia and Herzegovina.