Milorad Dodik
Milorad Dodik
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Milorad Dodik

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Milorad Dodik

Milorad Dodik (Serbian Cyrillic: Милорад Додик, pronounced [mîloraːd dǒdik]; born 12 March 1959) is a Bosnian Serb politician who served as the 8th President of Republika Srpska from 2022 until his removal from office in 2025. Having previously held the office from 2010 to 2018, he also served as the 7th Serb member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina from 2018 to 2022.

Dodik has been the president of the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD) since its formation in 1996 and has held several political offices within Republika Srpska, the Serb-majority entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina. He served as the prime minister of Republika Srpska from 1998 to 2001 and again from 2006 to 2010.

Initially, both Dodik and the SNSD were viewed as moderate and reformist alternatives to the ultranationalist Serb Democratic Party during the 1990s and early 2000s. However, since then, both Dodik and the SNSD have adopted a more Serbian nationalist and separatist stance, advocating for the right of Bosnian Serbs to self-determination. His tenure has been marked by accusations of authoritarianism from his critics, the undermining of federal Bosnian institutions, and closer ties with both Russia and Serbia.

In February 2025, the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina sentenced Dodik to one year's imprisonment and forbade him from political activity for six years due to defying decisions by the High Representative. The verdict was confirmed in August 2025. The one-year prison sentence was subsequently commuted to a fine. On 18 August, Dodik's appeal was rejected and his mandate as Republika Srpska president was officially terminated, with the termination date marked as 12 June 2025. The National Assembly of Republika Srpska initially disputed this decision, but ultimately accepted it in October 2025.

Dodik was born in Banja Luka to Bogoljub and Mira Dodik. He lived in Laktaši, where he attended elementary school. There, he played on the town's basketball team in Yugoslavia's amateur league. In 1978, he graduated from an agricultural high school in Banja Luka, after which he entered the Faculty of Political Sciences at the University of Belgrade, where he graduated in 1983.

From 1986 through 1990, Dodik was the chairman of the executive board of the Municipal Assembly of Laktaši. In 1990, at the first multi-party elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina, he was elected to the Assembly of the Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as a candidate of the Union of Reform Forces of Yugoslavia and was a political disciple of liberal reformer Ante Marković. During the Bosnian War, Dodik served as a representative in the National Assembly of Republika Srpska.

During that time, he formed the Independent Members of Parliament Caucus (Клуб независних посланика у Народној Скупштини Републике Српске, Klub nezavisnih poslanika u Narodnoj Skupštini Republike Srpske), which was the only political opposition to the Serb Democratic Party (Српска демократска странка, Srpska demokratska stranka) and its allies, which held the absolute majority in the wartime parliament of the Republika Srpska. The caucus he chaired was to form the core of the Party of Independent Social Democrats (Stranka nezavisnih socijaldemokrata, or SNSD) in 1996, after the peace was signed as a result of the Dayton Agreement. He was elected as the first President of SNSD. The party later united with another social-democratic party to form the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats, of which Dodik is president.[citation needed]

After conflicts between Biljana Plavšić with the rest of Radovan Karadžić's Serb Democratic Party (SDS), she founded a new political party, the Serb National Alliance (SNS). Early elections in Republika Srpska were held in 1997, after which Plavšić and her SNS closely cooperated with the smaller Serb socialist parties (Socialist Party and Dodik's SNSD). Dodik was nominated Prime Minister of Republika Srpska, even though his party had only two seats in the National Assembly.

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