An envoy for Bosnian Serb leader and President of Republika Srpska entity Milorad Dodik has met in Russia with the leader of the infamous radical group 'Night Wolves', Alexander Sergeyevich Zaldostanov to present him with a decoration Dodik awarded to him for promoting ties between Moscow and Banja Luka.

Zaldostanov, also known as The Surgeon, is the leader of the Night Wolves, a motorcycle club close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose members in recent years rode around Europe promoting Russian nationalist policies.

The Night Wolves are seen as an extension of Russian extremism, and they have branches in other countries like Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, where they participated in a commemoration of 9 January as the day of the Republika Srpska entity, which was declared unconstitutional by the Bosnian Constitutional Court.

During the term of the Barack Obama administration, the United States declared them responsible for subversive activity in Ukraine, that is, support to separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk.

Victory Day marked in Banja Luka in presence of Night Wolves group

Zaldostanov is on a list of persons identified by the Bosnian Intelligence-Security Agency (OSA) as a threat to national security and he has been banned from entering the country. This did not prevent Dodik to confer on him an entity decoration that was presented to him in Moscow by Darko Banjac, a member of the Serb entity parliament.

Banjac said in a Twitter post on Wednesday that he met with Zaldostanov in Moscow as Dodik's envoy and presented him with the decoration.

“The Surgeon is a proven friend of the Serb people and RS. Serbs and Russians are brother nations and will always be,” Banjac tweeted, featuring photos of his meeting with Zaldostanov and other members of his group.

Dodik in May visited Moscow and where he met Putin and presented him with a decoration from the entity government. RS Parliament Speaker Nenad Stevandic, too, travelled to Moscow in May.