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The United States, already struggling to contain intractable crises in the Middle East and Ukraine, is also grappling with an impasse in the Balkans over a gas pipeline to Bosnia, an issue with high geopolitical stakes. be.
The project is backed by the United States and the European Union but has been hampered by ethnic feuds that have long plagued Bosnia, with Moscow’s opposition to gas supplies to the fragile country torn between east and west. The purpose is to break free from tightness.
The proposed pipeline, which would bring in natural gas from neighboring Croatia, a NATO member and member of the European Union, would be just 160 miles long, cost about $110 million, and cost around $110 million. That’s a pittance compared to the $15 billion it cost to build the stream. Gas connector connecting Russia and Germany.
But it would significantly reduce Moscow’s influence in a highly volatile region. Russia frequently used energy control as a weapon against Ukraine in the years leading up to its full-scale invasion in February 2022, and has since offered sweet energy deals to countries like Hungary and Serbia to promote European unity. It has been used to harm.
Russia has no territorial claims to Bosnia or other Balkan countries, and its main objective was to prevent them from integrating with the West.
The stalled pipeline is “much more important than just the future infrastructure of Bosnia and Herzegovina or a small Balkan country,” said Vesna, Croatia’s former foreign minister who helped steer the country into the European Union in 2013. Pusic said.
“This is about closing the path to destabilizing Russian influence in Europe,” Pusic said in an interview. “The big road is, of course, Ukraine, but this is a small road. But if it is not closed, it will expand and radiate instability throughout the Balkans and beyond,” she added.
Unlike other European countries that diversified their energy supplies after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Bosnia remains completely dependent on Moscow for its natural gas.
Without alternative supplies from the West, James C. O’Brien, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, said in a telephone interview that Bosnia would be left behind and uniquely vulnerable to pressure from Russia. There is a risk of being exposed to.”
O’Brien visited the Bosnian capital Sarajevo this month as part of U.S. efforts to move the Croatian pipeline, free politicians from domestic feuds and blunt Russian influence. “This is a vulnerability that has to be addressed,” O’Brien said.
Bosnia’s main energy sources are hydroelectric power and local coal. But while natural gas from Russia accounts for less than 5 percent of the country’s total energy mix, it helps power large aluminum factories and fuels heating plants that keep Sarajevo warm in winter.
The Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina is a volatile fusion of territories inhabited by Muslim Bosniaks, Orthodox Christian Serbs, and Roman Catholic Croats, with few people observing their religion. It has stumbled from crisis to crisis since 1995, when years of bloodshed came to an end. former Yugoslavia.
The peace deal ended a war that killed around 100,000 people in the early 1990s, but left Bosnia with an elaborate and highly dysfunctional political system. The country is divided into two main autonomous “entities”: the Muslim-Croat Federation and the Serb-majority region called Republika Srpska.
This rickety and disjointed structure is presided over by a weak central government with three presidents, one for each ethnic group, who are supposed to share power, but whose political leaders tend to foment division. is thriving in
Republika Srpska, led by militant Serb nationalist Milorad Dodik, has repeatedly threatened to secede, a move that risks sparking fresh bloodshed. Mr. Dodik regularly visits Russia, most recently meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin on Wednesday to push for another pipeline project to increase gas supplies from Russia. His territory has its own Serbian-run gas company, Gas-Res, as well as a Russian-owned refinery that relies on Russian crude oil.
Bosnia’s Croat leader Dragan Kovic has said he supports the Western pipeline plan, but it would be under the control of a Croat-run company rather than Bosnia’s existing pipeline operator BH Gas, based in Sarajevo. He said he hopes to put it there. And it is run by Bosniaks. The company Kobik hopes to establish will be based in Mostar, a Bosnian city that is ethnically mixed but has long been a stronghold of Croat xenophobia.
The spat prompted an unusually candid intervention from Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken last month. In a letter to the foreign ministers of Bosnia and Croatia, Mr. Blinken accused Mr. Kovic of blocking “important projects.” He said his demands for a new ethnically Croat company were “duplicative, economically unviable and put the entire project at risk.”
Blinken added: “Such obvious corruption and self-dealing could jeopardize Bosnia’s hopes of one day joining the European Union.”
Assistant Secretary of State O’Brien declined to say whether the Croatian and Bosnian foreign ministers had responded to Blinken’s broad remarks, citing diplomatic secrecy. Both ministers declined interviews.
Kovic also declined to be interviewed, but said he was only protecting Croatia’s legitimate interests and not interfering with Bosnia’s path to the European Union.
BH Gas director Nihada Gramok acknowledged that most of the company’s directors and employees are Bosniaks, but said there was no need to create a new Croatian-led pipeline operator.
“This is all just politics,” she said, noting that her only concern is ensuring a “diverse and stable supply” of energy.
Muriš Cičić, an economist and president of the Bosnian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Sarajevo, criticized the spat over the U.S.-backed pipeline and Dodik’s efforts to build alternatives to bring in more Russian gas. “Bosnia’s dysfunctional model.” ”
“Everything in this country is based on ethnic discrimination, including gas,” he said, adding, “Our politicians divide everything that can be divided and put each part under their command. It goes beyond all economic logic.”
Tsitsich said the feud not only prevents common action in the interests of the entire country, but also creates fertile ground for Russia to advance its own interests.
“Bosnia is a watershed between East and West, and it’s a point where Russia can easily cause instability through someone like Dodik,” Tsicic said.
Mr. Dodik may be the most outspoken in his desire to redraw Bosnia’s borders and keep it out of the European Union, but he is also concerned about fueling tensions and even violent conflict.
“Unfortunately, there are a lot of dodik here,” he said.
The European Union accepted Bosnia as a “candidate country” in 2022 as part of efforts to weaken Russia’s influence in the Balkans after its invasion of Ukraine. But formal negotiations have not begun, and the European Union’s executive gave a harsh assessment of Bosnia’s prospects in November, saying Bosnia had made “no progress” in the fight against corruption and that Brussels was demanding “no progress”. “Social and economic reforms” have been neglected, he said.
The idea to build a pipeline to bring gas from neighboring Croatia has been around for nearly 15 years, ever since Russia cut off gas shipments to the Balkans through Ukraine in 2009, leaving Sarajevo shivering in sub-zero temperatures for several days. also existed.
“We were very frightened by the shutdown in 2009 and realized that we had zero energy security,” recalls Almir Bekarevich, who ran BH Gas at the time.
He said that for many years Russian energy giant Gazprom looked like a “normal company selling gas,” but “it’s gradually become clear that Gazprom is playing political games.” Gas “has grown into a big geopolitical thing,” he added.
Bekarevich and others have begun lobbying for the construction of a pipeline from Croatia to end Russia’s monopoly, but little progress has been made even after the opening of a facility to handle the transport of liquefied natural gas on an island off the coast of Croatia in 2021. There was no.
“For years, it was just blah, blah, blah,” Bekarevich said. “But the Ukraine war changed everything. Now the situation has changed 100 percent.”
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