Republika Srpska President Milorad Dodik fell in love with a journalist during a press conference on Thursday, after she reportedly questioned his links to the underworld. News portal of the TV channel N1.
N1 correspondent Snezana Mitrović asked Dodik how he could appear in photos with well-known underworld figures recently arrested by police. We held Dodik responsible for this and accused the journalist of lying.
“Don’t lie, don’t lie, he lies every time he speaks. No one was close to me, they couldn’t even get close to me, and you can’t attribute this friendship and camaraderie to me, because I’ve been in power for twenty years,” she said. The journalist said she was not targeted, but it might be a security problem.
Dodik responded that he can take pictures with anyone during his election campaign, and he has no influence on that. At the same time, in the recordings in question, representatives of the underworld appeared not only at election campaign events, but also at Dodik’s party meetings, where they shook hands with some of them.
At the press conference, the politician also accused N1 of trying to portray him as pro-Russian in line with American interests and weaving “anti-Serbian” narratives around him.
“We are very tolerant in allowing you to enter official institutions at all… Do you think there is no service tracking you and what you are doing?”
– Dudik switched to a more threatening style. At some point during the reprimand, he took the microphone out of the woman’s hand. He later threatened N1 – and indirectly the journalist – with banning it.
The story did not end even after the press conference, Dodik wrote a few hours after his call with Mitrovic N1. At first, the woman thought the politician would apologize, but the opposite happened. According to Mitrovic, Dodik insulted and insulted him because he wrote that he had trained him before.
According to the journalist, he did not report the politician only because he did not record the conversation. According to his statement, he has since learned from several other journalists that Dodik pressured them over the phone.
As a result of the events, Safe Journalist became an organization that fights for journalists Issue a statementThey call on Dodik to end the killing of journalists. The Journalists’ Union of Bosnia and Herzegovina said it would take the matter to court.
As for the pro-Russian policy linked to Dodik: NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg spoke on Monday of his concern about Russian influence in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the separatist aspirations of the Bosnian Serbs.
In his statements, the NATO Secretary-General noted that Milorad Dodik, President of Republika Srpska in Bosnia and Herzegovina, has repeatedly called for the secession of his part of the country in the past two decades, because Bosnia and Herzegovina, in his opinion, is an independent state. Dysfunctional as a country. In addition, Bosnian Serbs do not want to sever ties with Russia, citing historical and cultural ties, and are opposed to Bosnia and Herzegovina imposing sanctions on Moscow.
