Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik, for whom an arrest warrant has been issued in Bosnia and Herzegovina, said on Saturday that he has returned to BiH after having been in Israel earlier this week but without specifying where exactly he is. Meanwhile, EU officials have said he can no longer be a partner to the EU.

“I have arrived,” Dodik wrote briefly in a post on the social network X, which only fueled further speculation about where he is actually located. It is assumed that after his brief stay in Israel, where he arrived for a conference dedicated to the fight against antisemitism but was declared unwelcome, he left aboard the Republika Srpska (RS) government plane after the BiH Court confirmed it had requested Interpol to issue an international warrant for his arrest.

This plane first landed in Belgrade on its way back and then continued its journey to Banja Luka, but there is no confirmation that anyone saw Dodik at the airports in those two cities.

From Israel, he had announced that he would return to Bosnia and Herzegovina next week “peacefully”.

Interpol has not yet confirmed whether the BiH Court's order meets the criteria required for the issuance of an international arrest warrant, which would obligate member states to arrest Dodik.

The BiH Court has already sentenced Dodik to one year in prison in a non-final verdict for not implementing the decisions of the High Representative for BiH. After that, an investigation was opened against him and two other RS leaders on suspicion of committing the criminal offence of endangering BiH's constitutional order. Since they failed to respond to the summons from the BiH Prosecutor's Office, an internal wanted notice was issued for the three of them, and they were given one month of detention.

Dodik no longer an EU partner

At the same time, Dodik is facing growing international isolation due to his separatist policies and his endangering of peace and stability in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Marta Kos to N1: We won't talk to politicians with separatist aspirations

European Commissioner for Enlargement Marta Kos explicitly confirmed that Dodik is no longer a partner or interlocutor for the EU due to this.

The current situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina is tense, and Dodik is certainly a politician who, at this moment, is preventing the normalisation of conditions in BiH and preventing it from doing what is necessary, Kos said in an interview for the Slovenian edition of N1 television.

When directly asked if this means Dodik will no longer be a partner when discussing the continuation of BiH's European integration and solutions for the current crisis, Kos answered in the affirmative.