Peter Ivantsov, the Russian Ambassador to Bosnia, supported the formation of the auxiliary unit of Bosnia's Serb-dominated Republika Srpska (RS) entity, during the Monday meeting with the entity Interior Minister Dragan Lukac.

Speaking about the new amendments concerning the RS Interior Ministry, the Ambassador supported the formation of the reserve police unit of some 1,000 strong.

The two also talked about the security situation in this semi-autonomous entity as well as the Ministry's activities in preventing the negative consequences of the migrant crisis in the country.

The RS Government adopted the amendments to the Law on Police at the end of March. The changes introduced an auxiliary police unit in this entity.

The unit would be composed of 1,000 youths who would be summoned only when necessary, the Minister said earlier, adding that they would have the same competencies as active police officers engaged in police duties.

This prompted fierce reactions in Bosnia's other semi-autonomous entity, the Bosniak-Croat shared Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH) who in turn announced requests for the formation of FBiH's auxiliary unit. As the FBiH is further divided into ten cantons, this would possibly mean the creation of ten auxiliary sub-units, each belonging to one of the cantons.

After the 1992-95 war, Bosnia was divided into two semi-autonomous regions, Serb-dominated RS and the FBiH which is shared by the Bosniaks and the Croats. Each entity has its own government, parliament and police. The 2008 police reform supervised by the international community formed the state-level police, but those in the two entities remained.