UK Deploys Military Experts to Counter Russian Malign Influence in Bosnia and Herzegovina 

The UK Gov­ern­ment announced in June that it is deploy­ing mil­i­tary experts to counter Russ­ian malign influ­ence in Bosnia and Herze­gov­ina, say­ing that Moscow is back­ing plans by seces­sion­ist lead­ers who are “active­ly work­ing to cre­ate fur­ther divi­sion and con­flict” in the region. Accord­ing to a press release by the Prime Minister’s Office:

June 30, 2022 UK mil­i­tary spe­cial­ists will be sent to Bosnia and Herze­gov­ina to rein­force the NATO Mis­sion and pro­mote sta­bil­i­ty and secu­ri­ty in the coun­try, the Prime Min­is­ter has announced today (Thurs­day 30th June).  Bosnia and Herze­gov­ina is cur­rent­ly fac­ing the great­est exis­ten­tial threat in its post-war peri­od, with seces­sion­ist lead­ers active­ly work­ing to cre­ate fur­ther divi­sion and con­flict. These plans are backed by Moscow as part of Putin’s dri­ve to under­mine both Bosnia’s Euro-Atlantic inte­gra­tion and its sta­bil­i­ty.  At the request of NATO Head­quar­ters Sara­je­vo, a UK mil­i­tary counter-dis­in­for­ma­tion expert and a civil­ian strate­gic defence advis­er will be deployed to sup­port and train the Bosnia and Herze­govin­ian Armed Forces.  The counter-dis­in­for­ma­tion expert will bol­ster the NATO HQ and Bosnia and Herzegovina’s abil­i­ty to resist malign influ­ences – help­ing block Russ­ian and oth­er efforts to sow mis­trust and under­mine democ­ra­cy in the coun­try and region.

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The UK gov­ern­ment also said it would pro­vide £750,000 to estab­lish a cyber-secu­ri­ty cen­ter of excel­lence with­in the Uni­ver­si­ty of Sara­je­vo to bol­ster Bosnia and Herzegovina’s defens­es against cyber attacks.

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report has pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed that Rus­sia is cul­ti­vat­ing and sup­port­ing far-right groups in Bosnia and Ser­bia that oper­ate under the guise of human­i­tar­i­an aid, iden­ti­fy­ing the uni­formed far-right group Sveti Georgi­je Lon­cari [“St George of Lon­cari”] as one of the groups Rus­sia is sup­port­ing in Bosnia. We have exten­sive­ly cov­ered Russ­ian attempts to sup­port polit­i­cal move­ments in Europe to foment divi­sion, includ­ing its sup­port for seces­sion­ist groups in Spain, a far-right Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date in France, far-right politi­cians in Europe, or a new­ly found­ed polit­i­cal par­ty in the Netherlands.