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Republika Srpska President Milorad Dodik. Photo: Anadolu Agency.

In a clear sign of support for the controversial Bosnian Serb referendum on their national day, Russia’s ambassador to Bosnia, Petar Ivancov, held a series of meetings with Republika Srpska leaders on Monday.

“Our position is very clear. We believe the people of Republika Srpska have the right to declare themselves on vital issues,” Ivancov said after meeting the RS President, Milorad Dodik.

Ivancov supported the referendum although Bosnia’s Constitutional Court outlawed it on Saturday, and the EU and US repeatedly condemned it.

His statements were seen as a rebuke to Serbia’s leadership, which has denied support for the referendum, as well as a indication of the growing differences between Russia and Serbia.

Russia, traditionally close to Serbia, has become critical of the Serbian government’s pro-Western attitudes. At the same time, Russia has grown closer to the RS leadership, which has repeatedly challenged Western officials with its radical positions.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is scheduled to meet Dodik on Thursday, to discuss economic and political issues, including the controversial referendum.

The referendum is being organized in support of the RS National Day on January 9, which the state Constitutional Court last year ruled was discriminatory against non-Serbs and thus against the constitution.

After meeting Ivancov, Dodik called on all the citizens of Republika Srpska to come out and vote on September 25. “There will be no giving up on the referendum,” Dodik said.

He expressed his gratitude for Russia’s “unambiguous” support for the RS government’s intentions.

Almost at the same time that Ivancov was meeting RS officials in the RS administrative centre of Banja Luka on Monday, the RS office in Serbia and the Moscow-based Strategic Culture Foundation were holding a joint a conference in Belgrade, entitled “Referendum in Republika Srpska – democratic answer to undemocratic methods”, which was organized to promote the right of the RS leadership to hold the referendum.

Experts said the holding of this conference, as well Russia’s public support for the referendum, were significant blows for Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic and a sign of growing divisions between Belgrade and Moscow.

Vucic and other Serbian officials have repeatedly declined to support the referendum and Vucic met the RS leadership on several occasions in recent weeks in what was seen as Belgrade’s attempt to halt the vote.

“I have already said … we do not support the referendum. The one who is unpackaging the [1995] Dayton accord [which ended the 1992-5 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina] is making a big problem,” Serbian media quoted Vucic as saying on Sunday.

Speaking at the conference, the head of the RS office in Moscow, Dusko Perovic, said that RS institutions are making sure that those RS citizens who live in Russia will be able to vote on the referendum in the RS office there.

“We have informed residents of [Republika] Srpska in Russia on the upcoming referendum and on how and where they can vote. We are waiting for the delivery of the voting material,” Perovic said.

Speaking at the conference in Belgrade, RS officials and experts said the referendum was not organized to threaten the Dayton peace accord, but to protect it.

“The Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, with its decision to ban the referendum, is undermining the Constitutional order of Bosnia and Herzegovina,” Mladjan Cicovic, director of the RS Office in Belgrade, said.

Cicovic said that preparations for referendum are also taking place in Serbia, where RS voters will be able to vote in five cities: Belgrade, Novi Sad, Subotica, Zrenjanin and Pancevo.

Zoran Cvorovic, a professor from the University of Kragujevac and a member of the Moscow-based Strategic Culture Foundation, said that if the RS backed down on the referendum now, it could be the end of that entity.

“The attack on the [National Day] 9 January could lead to a decision that even the name of [Republika] Srpska is unconstitutional. That could be the end of Republika Srpska as an entity,” Cvorovic said.

Professor Nenad Kecmanovic, from Banja Luka University, one of the advisors to RS President Dodik, told the conference that the West is now more alarmed by Dodik’s meeting with Putin, so close to the referendum, than by the referendum itself.

“The referendum is not a problem any longer but [Dodik’s] call and visit to Moscow because Russians are [now] interfering in an area that NATO and Washington see as their own,” he said.