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Mourners at Srebrenica. Photo: AP/Amel Emric.

The mayor of Srebrenica, Camil Durakovic, told BIRN on Thursday that the decision by Serbia’s ally Russia to vote down the resolution was a “slap in the face of the victims”.

Russia on Wednesday vetoed the British-drafted resolution intended to mark the 20th anniversary of the July 1995 massacres of more than 7,000 Bosniaks by Bosnian Serb forces, saying it was anti-Serb and would cause more divisions in Bosnian society.

But Durakovic said that the resolution would have helped people in Bosnia and Herzegovina to face up to the past.

“Everyone is talking about reconciliation, but without truth we cannot have reconciliation,” said Durakovic.

He added that it was strange that the UN Security Council, which created the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia to prosecute wartime crimes, did not respect the verdicts handed down by the court defining the massacres as genocide.

The Bosniak member of the country’s presidency, Bakir Izetbegovic, also criticised the veto, calling the Russians “genocide deniers”.

Some Serbian experts suggested however that the Russian veto was a consequence of the current poor relations between Moscow and the West, which have been worsened by the Ukraine crisis.

“There is less understanding between Russia and the West and more willingness to take this kind of misunderstanding public,” said Aleksandra Joksimovic, director of the Centre for Foreign Affairs in Belgrade.

Sandra Orlovic, the executive director of the Humanitarian Law Centre, said that the failure to adopt the resolution was a step backwards for Serbia and a blow to its international image.

“The veto that Russia imposed is a result of a request that came from Serbia, and that request was based on a distorted interpretation of what is said in the resolution,” Orlovic said.

Ivo Viskovic, a professor at Belgrade University’s Faculty of Political Sciences, said however that the Russian veto was a success for Serbian diplomacy after Belgrade’s opposition split the Security Council.

“Perhaps it would be better that Britain had not insisted on its own proposal, but in the end obviously in such a situation they preferred to force Russia to veto it because they knew it could not be adopted,” Viskovic said.

Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic said on Wednesday that the failure to pass the resolution was important for Serbs.

“Not only because it prevented a stain being put on the whole Serbian nation in an attempt to declare a genocide, but because today Russia has shown and proved that it is a true and honest friend,” Nikolic said.

The resolution had sparked weeks of political recriminations ahead of the Srebrenica 20th anniversary.

Both Serbia and Bosnia’s Serb-dominated entity Republika Srpska deny that the killing of 7,000 men and boys from Srebrenica by Bosnian Serb forces 20 years ago was genocide, despite the rulings of several international courts.

Despite the row over the resolution however, Serbian Prime Minister Vucic has said that “if conditions are met”, he will represent Serbia in Srebrenica on Saturday at the 20th anniversary commemoration of the massacres.

But Izetbegovic suggested that Vucic might get a frosty reception.

“As for Aleksandar Vucic’s arrival in Srebrenica, it is maybe best for him to say nothing now,” he said.