SARAJEVO, Oct 29, 2025 (BSS/AFP) - The US Treasury on Wednesday lifted sanctions on former Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik, who thanked President Donald Trump for correcting what he called a "great injustice".

The Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) introduced sanctions against Dodik in 2017 for his secessionist policies, namely the "obstruction of the Dayton Agreements", which ended Bosnia's inter-ethnic war in 1995.

The veteran Bosnian Serb politican pushed Bosnia's weak central government to the brink in recent months with threats of secession, in one of the country's most severe political crises since its breakaway from Yugoslavia triggered the 1992-1995 war.

The war left Bosnia split into the highly autonomous Serb-run Republika Srpska and the Muslim-Croat Federation. The two are linked by a weak central administration.

A Bosnian court convicted Dodik in February of flouting decisions by Christian Schmidt, the international envoy overseeing the Dayton peace deal. The ruling removed Dodik from office and banned him from politics for six years.

Earlier this month, the Bosnian Serb parliament named his close associate Ana Trisic Babic as interim president.

The United States lifted sanctions against Dodik, Serb member of Bosnia's joint presidency Zeljka Cvijanovic, RS parliamentary speaker Nenad Stevandic and dozens of other Bosnian Serb officials and companies.

Dodik on X thanked Trump for "correcting the great injustice done to Republika Srpska, its representatives and their families, an injustice created by the Obama and Biden administrations".

He also called the move a "moral rehabilitation of the truth" about his administration.

"Once again, it has been proven that everything said against us was a lie and propaganda, on which a great mess was created by Christian Schmidt - a mess that now needs to be cleaned up," he said.

Bosnia's electoral commission has called an early election on November 23 to choose a new Republika Srpska president to lead the entity until general elections scheduled for October 2026.