Russian embassy: Western countries preparing ground for Bosnia’s ‘NATO-isation’

Some western countries, primarily the US and the Great Britain, are preparing the ground for a “slow NATO-isation” of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Russian embassy said on Tuesday, calling on Bosnian officials not to get “drawn into artificially imposed game with marked maps.”

The embassy called as “speculative” the statements about the upcoming vote on extension of the EU military mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina, noting that the ideas are emerging towards enhancement of NATO troops in the country in case of the “hypothetical absence of the extension of the mission” before the UN Security Council this November.

The embassy also assessed as “ungrounded” the explanations about the need to expand the military presence in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

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“We start from the fact that, according to the latest report of the EU forces to the UN Security Council, the security situation in BiH is still peaceful and stable. In this sense, the explanations about the need to expand the military personnel of EUFOR, including at the expense of Bundeswehr soldiers, are unfounded. And we consider particularly unacceptable the reference to the impact of events in Ukraine on the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” the embassy said in a Facebook post.

It noted that the “growing propaganda uproar” around the EUFOR Althea mission is “not a coincidence,” and that some western countries, primarily the US and the Great Britain, are “preparing the ground for a slow NATO-isation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.”

“This is by no means done in the interest of strengthening the internal security in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which, as the westerners themselves note, is not threatened, but for the sake of geopolitical dominance, the desire to maintain its hegemony at all costs. In this sense, we do not rule out provocations that will prove the ‘weakness’ of EUFOR and the need to replace them with the occupying NATO troops,” the embassy stressed and called on the local officials not to get drawn in a “artificially imposed game with marked maps” and to “start a substantive dialogue on current internal issues without external dictates.”

“As for Russia, it consistently starts from its obligations as a guarantor of the Peace Agreement in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” the statement added.