Former President Milorad Dodik on Monday withdrew from all official roles in Republika Srpska, the Serb-majority entity that makes up half of Bosnia and Herzegovina, after almost three decades in power.

A months-long standoff with the state judiciary has thus ended with Dodik's complete capitulation.

It began in February, when a Bosnian federal court sentenced him to one year in prison and barred him from politics for six years for flouting decisions by High Representative Christian Schmidt, the international envoy tasked with enforcing the Dayton Agreement peace deal that ended the Bosnian War 30 years ago.

In August, Bosnia's Central Election Commission stripped Dodik of the presidency of Republika Srpska.

Initial defiance

"I won't step down. There will be a referendum at the end of September," Dodik repeatedly insisted, both after the court's decision and after being stripped of the presidency.

While he avoided a prison sentence by paying a fine, he is still barred from all political activity for six years.

But now, even the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD), the party Dodik has led for as long as he has been in power, has reversed its defiant stance.

After months of threatening secession in response to Dodik's conviction, the party has ultimately conceded.

Dodik has asked that the National Assembly of Republika Srpska appoint an interim president until a new one is elected in an early presidential election on November 23.

"This is part of our broader strategy — a move to resist threats aimed at undermining Republika Srpska," Dodik said on Monday.

Dodik's divided party

Despite stepping back, Dodik remains the head of the SNSD, his brainchild and the party that paved the way for his rise to political power.

But from once exercising near-total control over the entity of Republika Srpska, and even exerting major influence on national politics by either granting or withholding Republika Srpska's support for decisions at the Bosnian level, Dodik now finds himself reduced to leading a party that is fragmented by internal rifts.

Indeed, his withdrawal could mean the unraveling of the SNSD itself and with it, the fading legacy of what former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and the West once described as a "breath of fresh air in the Balkans."

Rise and self-inflicted fall

Following the signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement in 1995, Bosnia and Herzegovina was split into two highly autonomous entities: the predominantly Serb Republika Srpska and the predominantly Bosniak-Croat Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Dodik rose to power in 1998 when he assumed the leadership of Republika Srpska, where he ruled unchallenged for most of the intervening period until his conviction earlier this year.

Ironically, it was Dodik himself who set recent events in motion by bringing a case to the Constitutional Court. He expected to be able to discredit the High Representative, Christian Schmidt, who had introduced legal reforms allowing elected politicians to be criminally prosecuted.

Instead, the result was a verdict that triggered a months-long — and ultimately futile — effort to cling to power.

Even the recurring threats of a referendum, which Dodik invoked more than 50 times to portray himself as the sole defender of Serb national unity, couldn't save him.

A devastated economy

More than two decades of unchecked corruption, cronyism, nepotism and patronage politics have devastated the economy of Republika Srpska.

Public utilities and industries have been hollowed out as a result of shady tenders, fake concessions and legal settlements.

The power distribution company of Republika Srpska was bankrupted in just a few years, and thermal power plants — once major exporters of energy — now teeter on the brink of collapse.

Champion of Serb unity?

While Dodik publicly championed Serb unity, the unity Dodik relied on ultimately served only the interests of his family and political circle.

His leadership delivered everything but the things Republika Srpska truly needed: economic growth, post-war recovery and reconciliation.

Weakening the central state and paving the way for Republika Srpska's potential future secession became a central aim of Dodik and the SNSD.

After the 1992-1995 Bosnian War, Republika Srpska had a population of nearly 1.5 million. Today, that number is estimated to have shrunk to barely 700,000.

Allies in Moscow, Budapest and Belgrade

Although he initially came to power with Western support, Dodik later pivoted to Moscow, forging strong ties with President Vladimir Putin. He also developed close links to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic.

Dodik was convinced that Moscow would give its unwavering support if Republika Srpska's secession from Bosnia and Herzegovina ever became viable.

But no such support ever materialized — neither from the Kremlin nor from Budapest or Belgrade. In short, the much-anticipated Balkan political bloc never came about.

Relations with the High Representative 

Dodik's downfall can be traced back to a key court ruling in 2020 that assigned state property that had belonged to the government of the Yugoslav Republic of Bosnia before the 1992 war to the central government of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Dodik considered the ruling unacceptable because it challenged the notion of Republika Srpska having exclusive control over its territory.

A political clash followed with then-High Representative Valentin Inzko of Austria, who introduced a law criminalizing genocide denial. This was seen as a direct affront to Republika Srpska's leadership, which continues to deny the internationally recognized Srebrenica genocide.

Inzko was succeeded by Germany's Christian Schmidt, whom Dodik declared persona non grata for enforcing laws he saw as harmful to Republika Srpska. Dodik even ordered police to arrest Schmidt if he entered the entity — a threat that was never acted upon.

Ultimately, by stepping down and halting further confrontation with the international community and national institutions, Dodik has tacitly accepted both Schmidt's authority and the legitimacy of the Bosnian court that sentenced him.

Edited by: Aingeal Flanagan