SARAJEVO, Oct 19, 2025 (BSS/AFP) - The parliament in the Bosnian Serb statelet on Saturday named an interim president to replace the entity's former political leader Milorad Dodik after he was stripped of his office.

Dodik had pushed Bosnia's weak central government to the brink over recent months with threats of secession, in one of the country's most severe political crises since its split from Yugoslavia triggered a war that ended 30 years ago.

He was convicted in February by a Bosnian federal court of flouting decisions by Christian Schmidt, the international envoy enforcing a peace deal that ended Bosnia's 1992-1995 war. The ruling removed him from office and banned him from politics for six years.

The Bosnian Serb parliament in the city of Banja Luka on Saturday elected his close associate Ana Trisic Babic to the presidency of Republika Srpska (RS).

Trisic Babic, 58, is a former deputy foreign minister of Bosnia and has served as an advisor to Dodik for the past 15 years.

"By this decision, the mandate of the current president of the RS ends," read the act adopted by the parliament's members, including ones from Dodik's SNSD party.

Dodik maintains relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin and has been targeted since 2017 by US sanctions for his separatist policies.

He branded the case against him a "political trial".

Bosnia's Central Electoral Commission has called an early election on November 23 to choose a new RS president who would lead the entity until general elections scheduled for October 2026.

The deal that ended the war in 1995 obliged ethnic Serbs to accept Bosnia's independence. In return they were given their own statelet with 49 percent of the territory.