Bosnia Votes Sunday as Banned Pro-Russian Leader Dodik Shadows Election and EU Bid Stalls

Polls opened Sunday morning in Bosnia-Herzegovina for a general election that will decide the country's three-person presidency, national parliament, and leadership of its two semi-autonomous entities. Voting closes at 7 p.m. local time, with the Central Election Commission expected to release preliminary results shortly after, according to Global Banking and Finance Review, which cited Reuters.

Around 3.4 million voters are eligible, choosing between the Muslim-majority Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Serb-dominated Republika Srpska. These two entities were created by the 1995 Dayton peace accord that the United States brokered to end the 1992-95 war.

For the first time, election officials deployed electronic voter identification and ballot scanning, intended to address long-standing complaints about tampering and manipulation in prior votes. Euronews and Ukrainian outlet UNN both reported delays at multiple polling stations Sunday tied to glitches in the new digital system.

A Crowded Field, Divided by Ethnicity

Seventy-five parties are on the ballot, most organized along ethnic lines. Bakir Izetbegovic of the Bosniak nationalist SDA is seeking a third term after losing the presidency seat to Denis Becirovic in 2022. Croat voters are largely backing ethnic parties including the local branch of Croatia's ruling Croatian Democratic Union, while the Serb-dominated SNSD runs Republika Srpska.

Tracking platform Poliwave had the SDA holding a narrow national lead at 21.4%, trailed by the multi-ethnic Social Democratic Party at 16.7%, according to Global Banking and Finance Review. In Republika Srpska, Dodik's SNSD led with 34.2% support.

Dodik Isn't on the Ballot, But He's Everywhere

Milorad Dodik, the former Republika Srpska president, cannot run. He was convicted of defying the international High Representative who enforces the Dayton accord and is now barred from public office. Euronews and the Washington Post noted he recently met with Russian officials before the vote.

Dodik's critics call him a separatist who has spent years threatening Republika Srpska's secession and courting closer ties to Moscow. His supporters see something different: an elected Bosnian Serb leader stripped of office by an unelected foreign envoy, a structure some view as an affront to Republika Srpska's self-governance rather than a legitimate check on democracy. That dispute over the High Representative's authority remains unresolved and politically live in Bosnia.

Voters Tired of the Same Script

Mostar voter Ivan Silic told the Associated Press, as relayed by Euronews, that nothing has improved since he first cast a ballot and that politicians live comfortably while everyone else's situation stays the same.

In Banja Luka, 76-year-old pensioner Dusan Cvijic told Reuters, via Global Banking and Finance Review, that government policy has failed and that life is very hard, adding there are ways to improve things if done honestly.

Bosnia secured EU candidate status in December 2022 and got the green light to open formal accession talks in 2024. Those talks still haven't started, because Bosnia's leaders have not passed the judicial oversight and anti-corruption reforms Brussels requires, according to Global Banking and Finance Review.

A Different Kind of Election, Same Week

The pro-Russian thread running through Bosnia's vote sits against the backdrop of Russia's own parliamentary election, a separate contest that concluded with preliminary results showing Vladimir Putin's United Russia party holding roughly 58% of the vote and the Communist Party trailing at 14%, according to Breitbart. Western governments have called that vote engineered, since anti-war parties were barred from standing. Leaders in Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and China publicly congratulated Putin on the result, Breitbart reported, while the Kremlin blamed Western sabotage attempts, including Ukrainian drone strikes on election day, for what it called an unprecedented threat to the vote.

That election has no direct institutional link to Bosnia's Sunday vote. But it frames the geopolitical stakes Western officials attach to Dodik's Moscow ties and to whether Republika Srpska drifts further from Sarajevo and Brussels and closer to the Kremlin's orbit.

The immediate question is whether Sunday's digital voting glitches get resolved before polls close, and whether the Central Election Commission's preliminary count, due after 7 p.m. local time, hands Dodik's SNSD enough strength in Republika Srpska to keep pressing his separatist agenda even from outside formal office.