Do we like them?Do we like Milorad Dodik?
Our score: 1 out of 10. A court-confirmed sentence for defying the peace envoy, a court finding on his anti-LGBTI statements, and no real good turned up.
Dodik started out as the West's kind of Bosnian Serb: a reformist who was once cast as a moderate. Over two decades he flipped into a secessionist who threatens to carve Republika Srpska out of Bosnia. It's a long slide from handshakes with diplomats to being sanctioned by them.
The legal trouble that finally cost him his job was a conviction in February 2025. A Bosnian court sentenced him to a year in prison for defying the international peace envoy's decisions, and he was banned from politics for six years. An appeals court upheld the verdict in August 2025, and he lost the presidency of the entity.
On the harm test, his record on LGBTI people is the headline. A Banja Luka court found at first instance in March 2026 that his statements about LGBTI people were discriminatory, in a case brought by a Sarajevo rights group. It is a first-instance ruling, so it could still change on appeal.
He also rejects the genocide finding on Srebrenica, which the international courts have made. A report on a 2024 rally of thousands of Bosnian Serbs describes denial of the genocide, and in April 2026 he took an award in Illinois and dismissed the label as NATO propaganda while protesters turned up outside. That is not a belief we'd cop, because it hurts the families of the victims.
The sanctions story is a mess. The US sanctioned him in 2022 over alleged corruption, and in October 2025 the Trump administration lifted them, after reported lobbying by Trump allies. Dodik thanked Trump, while Senator Jeanne Shaheen called the move reckless and premature. Bosnia's foreign minister said sanctions could always be reimposed.
On the personal side, a December 2025 Bosnian report says he apologised to Bosniaks for insults made during the campaign and then carried on making them. An apology followed by more of the same counts for nothing here. We searched for charity or kind acts and found none, which is why the good-person test stays at mixed.