As Russia expands its war in Ukraine, will the delicate peace in the Balkans be disrupted?

The day before Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the mobilization of reserve troops in an escalation of the war in Ukraine, he took time from his day for an unusual visit.

Separatist leader Milorad Dodik, the Serb member of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s three-person presidency, became one of few European politicians to break Putin’s isolation by visiting the Kremlin on Tuesday.

The trip was all the more unusual as Dodik is in the midst of an election campaign for leadership of Bosnia’s ethnic Serbian enclave, Republika Srpska, which he has repeatedly threatened to take out of its union with Bosnia’s other ethnic groups.

Smiling