A Russian writer who was supposed to attend an event in Banja Luka on Friday but was turned away at the Bosnian border with the explanation that he poses a security threat told media that this ban may have something to do with his recent involvement in the war in Ukraine.

“To me this is weird,” Yevgeny Nikolayevich Prilepin, better known as Zakhar Prilepin, told Russia’s Sputnik.

“Although I have not been travelling to foreign countries a lot recently, this and last year I was in Italy, Germany, Switzerland, France and I didn’t have any problems anywhere,” he said, adding that the ban to enter a European country was a “precedent.”

Prilepin said that when he arrived at the Serbia-Bosnia border crossing Raca, he was presented with a document that said he was barred from entering Bosnia on March 26 and that he was described as “a man who represents a threat for the security and international relations of that country (Bosnia).”

The writer said that he did not intend to speak about politics at the Banja Luka event, but that he wanted to speak about literature, as his work is well known in neighbouring Serbia.

“The thing is that I have until recently been a soldier and participated in the conflict in Ukraine and Donbass. Maybe it’s connected to that. And maybe someone wrote some complaint,” he said.

The writer said he came to Bosnia several times before as a guest of the film director Emir Kusturica and that he previously met with the President of Republika Srpska, Bosnia’s Serb-dominated semi-autonomous entity, Milorad Dodik.

“I came there some 20-30 times. For me this was unexpected,” he said.

The Russian Embassy in Bosnia expressed “concern” and “deep disappointment because of the incident” and it requested and explanation from Bosnia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.