The Trump administration has lifted sanctions on a bandit ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was ousted this month as president of the Serb enclave in Bosnia and Herzegovina for chipping away at a U.S.-brokered peace deal that ended bloody ethnic violence in the Balkans in the 1990s.
The lifting of sanctions against Milorad Dodik was announced after months of lobbying by allies of Donald Trump, who portrayed the Serbian nationalist leader as a defender of “Christian values” in the Muslim-majority country and the victim of a type of “legal action” taken against the US president.
Mr. Dodik had been sanctioned by the United States for ignoring the hard-fought 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement in Ohio to end the Bosnian war. While the agreement stopped the bloodshed, it also divided Bosnia into two organizations. One is a federation where Bosnian Muslims share power with Croats, and the other is Republika Srpska, where the Serbs are the majority.
For more than two decades in and around Srpska’s government, Dodik routinely threatened to secede from Bosnia and “reunify” it with Serbia. He has stymied Bosnia’s integration into Europe by stoking ethnic tensions, has frequent meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin and fostered what the U.S. Treasury Department once called a “corrupt patronage network.”
Bosnians had recently begun imagining a post-Dodik future after their longtime leader was convicted in a Bosnian federal court of undermining the Dayton Accords, barred from holding political office and stripped of the presidency. But experts say the unexpected and sudden lifting of sanctions on Mr. Dodik could allow him to continue controlling Srpska while also showing other dictators in the region that their well-funded lobbying efforts can reap rewards from President Trump’s Washington.
Andy Hoshaj, a Balkans expert at King’s College London, told CNN: “What message does this send that if you have the right connections and the right lobbyists, you can get off the sanctions list? This is setting a negative precedent.” He arrived three weeks before Dayton’s 30th anniversary, and said the timing of the Trump administration’s decision was particularly discouraging.
The U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has not explained why it lifted sanctions against Dodik, dozens of his allies, his family, and companies associated with them. CNN has reached out to the Treasury Department for comment.
The State Department said the decision came after Srpska’s parliament had taken “constructive actions” in recent weeks to “improve stability” in the country, an apparent reference to Srpska’s installation of an interim president after Dodik was stripped of his post in August and resigned earlier this month after initially threatening to rebel against Bosnian authorities.
Dodik said the decision corrects a “grave injustice” inflicted on Srpska “by the Obama and Biden administrations” and praised Trump and his allies for waiving sanctions against her. But what Dodik failed to mention was that he was also sanctioned by the Trump administration in July 2017 for interfering with the Dayton agreement. The Biden administration imposed new sanctions on him in 2022 and again in early 2025.
Dodik began courting Trump before the 2024 election, when the president was facing dozens of criminal charges. “America needs you, but other countries need you too!” Dodik wrote to Trump in September of that year, following the second assassination attempt on him.
Since Trump returned to the White House, Dodik’s overtures have been amplified by several of the president’s allies. Rod Blagojevich, a former Illinois governor who served eight years in prison on corruption charges and was pardoned by President Trump in February, has been posting support for Dodik for months.
Blagojevich thanked President Trump for waiving sanctions against Dodik in a post on Wednesday that read: “This material is being distributed by RRB Strategies LLC on behalf of Republika Srpska. Additional information is available at the Department of Justice in Washington, DC.”
Blagojevich’s company, RRB Strategies, signed a contract with the Srpska government in March, agreeing to “lobby state representatives to stop what appears to be a witch hunt against Srpska officials” and “seek the lifting of sanctions” against the government, according to a Justice Department filing. The value of that contract has been redacted.
Another lobbyist, Mark Zell, also signed a contract with the Srpska government in December 2024 worth $1 million for one year’s work, as well as a bonus if Zell’s company succeeds in lifting sanctions against Dodik and his allies, according to documents also filed on the Justice Department’s Foreign Agent Registration Act website. Zell told CNN in an email that the bonus fee provision has been rescinded in accordance with U.S. law.
This month, a prominent MAGA figure joined the chorus of Trump allies championing Dodik’s cause. Laura Loomer, a far-right influencer with a direct line to the president, said Dodik’s firing of Srpska was “the latest example of brazen attacks on leaders like Trump around the world.” She claimed that Dodik, a “Christian” leader, “is enduring a merciless political attack by a coalition of Muslims and globalists.”
Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, called on Trump to “embrace” Dodik and for the US to join forces with Srpska to defeat globalists who “seek the end of us all.”
Rudy Giuliani, a former New York City mayor and former personal lawyer to President Trump, visited Srpska in February, hosted Dodik on his podcast, and displayed a “Make Srpska Great Again” hat alongside Trump’s famous MAGA hat.
Hoshaj, the Balkans expert, said Dodik would use the sanctions relief to make a case “to the people and the people that he was vindicated by the United States and that what was done to him was unjust.”
New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called the lifting of sanctions “reckless and premature.”
“Mr. Dodik has undermined the Dayton Peace Accords, courted President Putin, and profited from corruption, but this is no basis for redress,” she said. “The American people deserve answers.”
