Authors

Abdullah Kesvelioglu¹;  ¹ University of Edinburgh, UK

Discussion

Moscow’s war on Kyiv once again turned international attention to Russia and Ukraine. Yet Moscow’s revisionist efforts go beyond Ukraine to the Balkans. Until recently, post-war state building in Bosnia and Herzegovina has been one of the few areas where the West and Russia managed a delicate and longstanding partnership. Western actors had the primary role in directing international statebuilding efforts. Russia, with its seats in the UN Security Council and the Peace Implementation Council for Bosnia and its contribution to UN missions, also had a crucial role in the process. However, this partnership ended as Russian spoiling reached another climax when Moscow withdrew its support to the international presence in the country. Many argue that Western appeasement toward Russia had a role in encouraging Putin to follow his revisionist agenda in Ukraine, Bosnia and beyond. Moscow’s policy towards Bosnia presents ample opportunities to observe whether this argument holds or is just a post hoc explanation. Relying on primary sources; UN Security Council records, official statements and news archives throughout the Putin era, this study aims to reveal a pattern by identifying where the Western and Russian agendas in Bosnia merged and diverged, how both sides managed such divergences and how the nature of these divergences evolved. It will be helpful to assess whether the West appeased Russia and what could have been done to prevent Russia from pursuing a revisionist path.