The colors of the flag are the same as the Russian one and the parade uniforms are very similar to the Moscow uniforms. Except that the military and police, who marched on January 9th in Banja Luka, the “capital” of Republika Srpska, are part of one of the entities that make up fragile Bosnia-Herzegovina. Not only that: the celebration of the national day, seen as smoke and mirrors by Sarajevo and the international community, is the symbol of patriotic pride born from the tragedy of ethnic war. «Those who are unable to emigrate to start a new life abroad are ultranationalists and many have fought» explains to Panorama an Italian who has lived for years in the Serbian Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Republika Srpska). “They see Russia and Vladimir Putin as a beacon and they don’t want to know about the European Union” underlines the source who prefers to remain anonymous. “The goal of many in these parts is to join Serbia or become 100 percent autonomous from Sarajevo.” The specter of secession hovers in the slice of Bosnia held by the Serbs, one of the hotbeds like Kosovo where the Kremlin is a point of reference. They are not the only thorns in the side of the West together with Donbass: in the Caucasus, the breakaway republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Russian protectorates, are stuck in Georgia. And Transnistria, which remained unchanged during the times of the USSR, is a slice of territory between Ukraine and Moldova.
Republika Srpska is the piece of the separatist hotbeds closest to us. On January 9th, “Putin’s angels” also marched, the motorcyclists who represent Great Russia from Crimea onwards. And obviously on the stage of honor was Moscow’s ambassador to Sarajevo, Igor Kalabukhov, and Belgrade’s prime minister, Miloš Vucevich. The Bosnian Serb president, Milorad Dodik, once a protégé of the Americans, now under their sanctions, occasionally raises the fear of secession. «Our mission is to leave Bosnia» is his message for the national day «and never join the EU». Dodik met Putin three times last year, most recently at the Brics meeting in Kazan on October 25. The Russian president spoke of “brotherly countries”. And the Bosnian Serb leader, addressing the Russian president, denied the accusations “from the American embassy (in Bosnia, ed.) about camps in Republika Srpska, which we allegedly set up together to destabilize Moldova”. Moldovan opponents would indeed have arrived in Banja Luka, but there is no evidence that Russian paramilitaries of the new, normalized Wagner have begun training them to overthrow the pro-European government in Chisinau.
«Bosnia and Kosovo are the hot spots that concern us closely» observes the former Chief of Defense Staff, Vincenzo Camporini. «Putin can also create problems in other parts, starting with Estonia in the Russian-speaking area, which in the north-eastern corner of the small Baltic country is 80 percent. The issue of protection of linguistic and ethnic communities or minorities is fertile ground.” The north of Kosovo with the Serbian stronghold of Mitrovica, where the myth of Wagner exists, has always been an unresolved issue. On January 10, the NATO-led KFOR mission welcomed the guarantee from the Kosovar Defense Minister, Ejup Maqedonci, that the Pristina government will not send security forces to the North without the authorization of the commander of the international forces. The Serbs of Mitrovica and surrounding areas have no intention of bowing to Albanian power. Only through the normalization of relations between Belgardo and Pristina will the outbreak be extinguished. One of the topics on the table of the summit with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni scheduled for January 31st. «It is incredible that after 25 years from the end of hostilities» Camporini points out, in reference to the NATO bombings of 1999 and the victory of the Kosovar independence activists «in a country as large as Umbria, we still have to keep thousands of soldiers of the Atlantic Alliance to maintain stability.”
The historic pro-Russian secessionist hotbed inherited from the disintegration of the USSR is nestled in the Caucasus. Abkhazia and South Ossetia are two independent republics wedged in Georgia and bordering Russia, the only country to recognize them. Civil wars, ethnic cleansing and Moscow’s military support, including the 2008 conflict provoked by Georgians, have marked their forgotten history. «Abkhazia is more inclined towards real independence, but Ossetia is aiming for entry into the Russian Federation as a natural unification with North Ossetia» explains Aldo Ferrari, professor at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, who for 40 years studying Eurasia. The Kremlin keeps five thousand men in Abkhazia and aims to open a naval base on the Black Sea, near the city of Ochamchira, strategic after the Ukrainian attacks on the fleet Russian Sevastopol in Crimea. The Abkhazians depend on the Kremlin’s energy and have Russian passports, but they refused to go to war in Ukraine. The government of Sukhumi, the capital of 65,000 inhabitants, which in exchange is selling off the land to Moscow, knows well that the support may not be eternal and is already frayed because all energies are concentrated on the invasion of Ukraine. The Ossetians, on the contrary, sent volunteers alongside the Russians in Donbass, even erecting a five-metre high bronze statue in the mountain town of Kvasysa dedicated to the first young man to fall in battle in Mariupol. In the entire country of 3,900 square kilometers recognized only by Russia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Nauru and Syria, before Assad’s collapse, just 56,500 people lived. South Ossetia is a military outpost of Moscow in northern Georgia with five Russian bases and at least five thousand troops.
«The war in Ukraine has diverted the Kremlin’s attention from the Caucasus. For decades the relationship with Georgia has been conflictual, but the ruling Georgian Dream party is improving relations” underlines Ferrari. “It is a less hostile government, which could change Moscow’s perspective.” The director of the Institute for International Political Studies for Russia, the Caucasus and Central Asia observes that «as long as Tbilisi remained pro-Nato, supporting the two secessionist republics was inevitable, but now the southern Caucasus could reserve some surprises for us. It is not excluded that Russia will begin to work on a possible rapprochement, especially between Abkhazia and Georgia. The geopolitical situation is in flux.” The scenario in Transnistria is more serious, the fragment of territory between Moldova and Ukraine, isolated since the collapse of the USSR, which still has 1,500 Russian soldiers on its territory, partly as a peacekeeping contingent after the 1992 civil war following the independence and garrison, in Rîbnia, of the largest Soviet ammunition depot in Eastern Europe. In the initial, then failed, plans for the invasion of Ukraine, Russian troops were supposed to reach as far as Odessa and establish a land corridor with Transnistria. Kiev has always considered it a thorn in its side. After three years, the tiny country is literally “at the gas pipe”: since December the Ukrainians have stopped the passage of Russian gas through their territory, the only free supply to Transnistria, worth half a billion dollars a year. More than half of the Tiraspol authorities’ budget depends on those agreements. «All the secessionist drives, whether fueled or not by the Kremlin, risk continuing to be thorns in the side, but Russia has gone far beyond its possibilities, as demonstrated by the loss of Syria» underlines Ferrari. «Much will depend on the final outcome of the war in Ukraine and on the negotiations that seem to emerge with the arrival of Donald Trump. Even if it were just a Pyrrhic victory”, concludes the expert, “the Kremlin could feel heartened and therefore fuel more adventurous operations”.
