Russia supports the peace accords that ended Bosnia's war in the 1990s and the country's territorial integrity, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday amid a Bosnian Serb leader's calls for secession of a Serb-run region from Bosnia.

Lavrov arrived in Bosnia two weeks before Bosnia's national election, a visit described by local media as a show of support for Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik, even though the Russian said he was not making a recommendation as to who to vote for.

Dodik, who is running for a Serb seat in Bosnia's inter-ethnic presidency, is campaigning on a ticket of a wider autonomy of the Serb Republic that he currently presides over and its ultimate secession from Bosnia.

Dodik, who favors closer ties with Russia rather than the West, hopes that Russia will support his separatist plans at the time when a land swap has been discussed between Serbia and Kosovo, meaning that borders at the Balkans may change again but this time with international blessing.