GERMAN TROOPS RETURN TO BOSNIA AMID INSTABILITY DUE TO UKRAINE WAR

Tue 16 August 2022:

Germany has sent troops to Bosnia and Herzegovina to join the European Union’s peacekeeping mission for the first time in 10 years as concerns mount about instability from the Ukraine war spilling over to the Western Balkans.

On Tuesday, the first German troops to return to the country were greeted in a ceremony at the Sarajevo headquarters of the EUFOR force that marked the start of their mission, a German military spokesman said.

Germany will deploy some 30 troops in total to Bosnia by mid-September, returning to the force that it had left at the end of 2012

Only days after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the EU decided to almost double the size of its EUFOR peacekeeping force to 1,100 from 600 troops by sending in reserves to stave off potential instability.

Bosnian Serb separatist leader Milorad Dodik, who has created the gravest political crisis in Bosnia since the war destabilizing key state institutions, has said that German troops are not welcome, referring to Germany’s role in the World War Two.

Dodik also said that he regretted agreeing as a member of the state presidency to extend the mandate of EUFOR.

More than 100,000 people were killed and millions were displaced in Bosnia’s 1992-95 war before it ended in a U.S.-brokered peace agreement.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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