A Pro-Russia Strongman at Mar-a-Lago

Milorad Dodik, the separatist Bosnian Serb leader, has won MAGA’s favor after a lobbying bonanza.

In the days after Tuesday’s midterm elections, luminaries of the MAGA movement will gather at Mar-a-Lago to turn their attention to 2028. Speakers will include a Cabinet secretary, the head of the Domestic Policy Council, and several members of Congress. Also present will be Milorad Dodik, the pro-Russia strongman who has bragged about spying on Americans and recently called Russian President Vladimir Putin “one of the most peace-loving leaders of our time.” Dodik is the de facto leader of Bosnia’s Serb population, concentrated in a political entity called Republika Srpska within Bosnia and Herzegovina. His push for secession risks reigniting bloody sectarian conflict in the Balkans.

Dodik’s travel plans were described to me by several people familiar with them. These people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to preview nonpublic matters, said the details could change at the last minute. (His office did not respond to a request for comment.) But Dodik’s expected attendance reflects his reversal of fortune under the Trump administration, the success of a pricey foreign lobbying campaign, and a further alignment of American and Russian interests.

Republika Srpska paid two of Trump’s top political advisers, James Blair and Chris LaCivita, as consultants and brought them to the Serb-majority political entity within Bosnia and Herzegovina for elections earlier this month. (They later donated their earnings to Trump’s presidential library fund after news of the work became public and the president lashed out at them on Truth Social.) When his party won a decisive result, Dodik credited both Trump and Putin for their support. “If it had not been for Donald Trump’s magnificent victory,” Dodik told supporters after the favorable result, “we would probably be political corpses today.”

In 2022, the Biden administration sanctioned Dodik for what the Treasury Department called “graft,” “corruption,” and “bribery,” as well as threats to the stability of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Balkan nation where ethnic divisions catalyzed a brutal war from 1992 to 1995. The conflict climaxed in the genocide at Srebrenica, which until Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine was the most horrific mass murder in Europe since World War II. Dodik, according to the U.S. government, had attempted to sabotage the accords that ended the war, the Dayton peace agreement. He was accused of creating parallel state institutions in the federated country’s Serb-majority entity and of denigrating other ethnic and religious groups, above all Muslim Bosniaks. Numerous family members, allies, and companies were eventually also sanctioned. Formerly Srpska’s president, Dodik was stripped of that position and banned from holding office for six years after being convicted by the Bosnian judicial system last year of flouting decisions by the international envoy overseeing the Dayton Accords. He has rejected those decisions as politically motivated and void of constitutional authority, and continues to exercise near-total control over Srpska’s institutions.

Since Trump returned to office last year, the Srpska government has unleashed millions of dollars on lobbyists in a bid to burnish Dodik’s image with the people around Trump. The strategy has been to portray him as a martyr in the American president’s image—a victim of legal maneuvering and a crusader for Christian values holding back what some Serbian nationalists characterize as a tide of Muslim influence. Among those whose services Dodik and his allies have tapped are Rudy Giuliani, the president’s former personal lawyer; Rod Blagojevich, the former Illinois governor who landed a pardon from Trump last year; and the firm employing Katie Wiles, the daughter of White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.

In October 2025, the Trump administration dropped the sanctions. The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control did not offer a rationale, but the State Department had days earlier hailed several conciliatory steps taken by Srpska’s legislative body as the result of Washington’s efforts to “defuse the crisis in Bosnia and Herzegovina.” State Department officials also pushed for the resignation of the international envoy who had clashed with Dodik. Christian Schmidt, a conservative German politician who had taken up the role of high representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2021, complied in May of this year, telling a German newspaper that he had come under “enormous and unexpected pressure from the U.S.”

Diplomats in the region as well as experts have viewed the Trump administration’s concessions to Dodik with significant alarm because of his avowed separatist aims and his explicit backing by Putin. Both Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina are candidates for European Union membership.

The event planned for next week at Mar-a-Lago is an offshoot of the Conservative Political Action Conference, a right-wing jamboree that has enlarged its international footprint in recent years. It’s called the CPAC Circle Retreat and Gala and is billed as a “Gathering of Visionaries.” The website makes explicit the event’s connection with the next presidential election, stating, “As midterm election results come in, we’ll discuss what they mean for the political landscape and the road to 2028.” Speakers include the secretary of labor and at least two U.S. senators, Mike Lee of Utah and Rick Scott of Florida. Eduardo Bolsonaro, the brother of Flávio Bolsonaro, the failed Brazilian presidential candidate who recently arrived in the U.S. to evade possible prosecution on allegations of money laundering and tax evasion, is another advertised speaker. When I asked Matt Schlapp, the chairman of the American Conservative Union and CPAC’s host, about Dodik’s attendance, he told me, “We will have a very interesting group of donors and VIPs, but we won’t comment on who will be in attendance other than who the speakers will be.” He added that the “focus will be on America’s future heading into 2028.”

It’s not clear whether Trump will be at Mar-a-Lago during Dodik’s anticipated visit, but his presence there will take him into one of MAGA’s main nerve centers. The White House did not respond to a request for comment. During a visit to Washington earlier this year, Dodik had photo ops with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Karoline Leavitt, the then–White House press secretary.

Current and former U.S. officials told me that Dodik may feel pressure to achieve his aim of securing Srpska’s independence soon, given that Trump is likely to be friendlier to him than a potential Democratic successor after 2028. Tuesday’s election in the U.S. will help determine MAGA’s long-term political viability. No matter the result, Trump will have another two years to keep giving Dodik what he wants.