Original article (in Bosnian) was published on 28/8/2025; Author: Mladen Lakić
Several media outlets, including the public news agency, shared claims from an anonymous X account whose credibility and intentions are more than questionable.
On August 13, 2025, the Alternativna Televizija (ATV) portal published an article under the following headline:
Dodik Was Convicted Because He Resisted Anti-Christian “Woke” Policies
The article refers to an “analysis by the page Know More”, which claims that “Republika Srpska is under great threat” and that “Dodik was convicted because he resisted anti-Christian woke policies”.
Republika Srpska, a majority-Christian entity in BiH, is under a great threat. Its president Milorad Dodik was convicted because he resisted anti-Christian “woke” policies.
In the same article, the High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina Christian Schmidt is described as an unelected foreign official acting as a “colonial governor”.
What is happening in BiH is not justice, it is persecution, the authors say.
“The autonomy of Republika Srpska, guaranteed by the Dayton Agreement, is being dismantled. Unelected foreign officials such as Christian Schmidt act as colonial governors in BiH”
At the end of the article, it is explicitly claimed that Dodik “did not break any law”, but merely “spoke the truth and refused to comply with foreign decrees”:
“And this is the reality: A democratically elected leader has been convicted for verbal disagreement. He did not break any law, he only spoke the truth and refused to comply with foreign decrees. That is not justice, this is ideological censorship, this is persecution”, the text states.
The article also included a one-minute video in English, published on the X profile Know More on August 13, 2025, from which the claims in the ATV article were drawn. The video shows Dodik, Schmidt, and Rod Blagojevich, with English captions translated in the ATV article.
The article was later republished with minor changes on the portals Provjereno, Banjaluka(.net) and the public news agency Srna.
The mentioned video from the Know More X account was also published on the Instagram profile Know more, the TikTok account “km_knowmore”, and the Facebook page Kritična masa. By the time this analysis was published, the four posts across different platforms had received just under 6,000 views and around 60 interactions.
What Is Know More and What Kind of “Analysis” Is This?
The “analysis” cited by these domestic media outlets is attributed to the page Know More without any explanation of what kind of source it actually is.
Raskrinkavanje covered the Know More accounts on X, TikTok, and Instagram, as well as the Kritična masa Facebook page, in a July 2025 analysis titled “Propaganda Campaign on Social Media: Demonization of the High Representative and Glorification of Milorad Dodik”.
It was explained how, in April 2025, these accounts began a propaganda campaign in English promoting the political narratives of Milorad Dodik and the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD). Since then, they have regularly published short videos in English aimed at portraying “Milorad Dodik’s efforts to preserve Republika Srpska and the Serbian people in BiH, against foreign Western influence embodied in the High Representative Christian Schmidt”.
These videos used a manipulative narrative about Schmidt, describing him as “the boss in Bosnia” who makes political decisions even though “nobody elected him”. This narrative is based on false claims that Schmidt assumed his post “illegitimately” because his appointment was not confirmed by the United Nations Security Council (1, 2, 3, 4).
Raskrinkavanje and Istinomjer had previously analyzed statements by domestic officials and media attempting to dispute the legality and legitimacy of the current High Representative in BiH (1, 2, 3). While it is true that Schmidt’s appointment was not confirmed by the UN Security Council, such confirmation is not a requirement for the appointment of the High Representative in BiH. These analyses also explained that there is no defined procedure for selecting a High Representative and that, “although the Security Council has in some past cases given its opinion, there is no legal basis requiring this practice”.
In the most recent Know More posts, which claim that Dodik was convicted despite not breaking any law, the same approach is used; Schmidt is again described as an unelected foreign official and a “colonial governor”.
As noted in our earlier analysis, there is very little information about the Know More X account. It states it was created in April 2014 and currently has fewer than 1,000 followers. The Kritična masa Facebook page, which republishes all posts from Know More, was created in August 2016 and is run from Serbia. The Know More Instagram account, created the same year, is also run from Serbia. Posts in Serbian on the Know More X account covering regional issues continued until June 2024. On TikTok this lasted until September, on Facebook until October, and on Instagram until January 2025. All four accounts switched to posting exclusively in English about Bosnia and Herzegovina in April 2025.
From all of this, it is clear that this is not any kind of “analysis”, as described by ATV, but rather propaganda content from several accounts across different social media, whose credibility and intentions are highly questionable.
Why Was Dodik Convicted?
On February 26, 2025, Milorad Dodik was found guilty in a first-degree verdict for, as stated in the announcement by the Court of BiH, committing the criminal offense of failure to enforce the decisions of the High Representative under Article 203a (1) of the Criminal Code of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
This article stipulates that “an official in an institution of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Republika Srpska, the Brčko District of Bosnia and Herzegovina, or in a canton, city or municipality, or local community, or any body of local administration or self-government, or a responsible person who fails to apply, implement, execute, or otherwise respect a decision of the High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina, or who prevents or otherwise obstructs the application, implementation, or execution of such a decision, shall be punished by imprisonment of six months to five years”.
This provision was introduced in the 2023 amendments to the BiH Criminal Code. The law with amendments is available on the website of the Court of BiH under the title Amendments to the Criminal Code of BiH – Official Gazette of BiH No. 47/23.
After the Court of BiH Appeals Chamber confirmed the first-degree verdict on August 1, 2025, Dodik was sentenced to one year in prison and a six-year ban from holding the office of President of Republika Srpska. On August 6, the Central Election Commission issued a decision terminating his mandate.
Dodik was convicted for refusing to implement the decisions of the High Representative Christian Schmidt between July 1 and July 9, 2023. As Detektor recalled in an August 2025 analysis, the chronology of events is as follows:
On July 1, 2023, the High Representative issued decisions preventing certain laws from entering into force. On July 7, Dodik signed decrees proclaiming those laws. On the same day, the High Representative also enacted amendments to the Criminal Code criminalizing non-compliance with his decisions.
This means that ATV’s claims that Dodik “did not break any law” and was “convicted for verbal disagreement” or for “resisting anti-Christian woke policies” are completely baseless and false.
On the Court of BiH website, the case file on Milorad Dodik is available, describing the “factual basis of the indictment”, which clearly shows that “verbal disagreement” or “resisting anti-Christian woke policies” was never part of the indictment or the conviction.
The accused Milorad Dodik is charged that, as an official in the institutions of Republika Srpska, in his capacity as President of Republika Srpska, although aware that the decisions of the High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina are binding under the powers granted to him by Article V of Annex 10 of the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Article II 1(d) of the said Agreement, issued a decree proclaiming the Law on Amendments to the Law on Publication of Laws and Other Regulations of Republika Srpska of 7 July 2023, in such a way that he personally signed it. The said law was adopted by the National Assembly of Republika Srpska at a session held on 21 June 2023, thereby failing to apply and implement the decision of the High Representative Christian Schmidt.
It is worth noting that the term woke refers to “awareness”, i.e. being aware of issues of social justice and equality. In political context, it is often used in right-wing circles sarcastically or pejoratively to dismiss ideas from left-wing circles as superficial or insincere. Raskrinkavanje has previously written about disinformation on so-called “woke policies” shared in the region (1, 2, 3).
According to the facts, the claim made by Alternativna Televizija that Dodik was convicted despite not breaking any law is rated as fake news. All subsequent reposts of this claim are rated as spreading fake news.
The identical claim in English published on the Know More X account is also rated as fake news, while posts on the Instagram and TikTok accounts of the same name, as well as on the Kritična masa Facebook page, are rated as spreading fake news.
