By Reuters
July 8, 2022, at 9:42 a.m.
BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany will deploy troops with the EU’s peacekeeping mission in Bosnia for the first time in a decade as concerns mount about instability from the Ukraine war spilling over to the Western Balkans, the parliament in Berlin decided on Friday.
Bosnia lies hundreds of miles from the fighting, but faces an increasingly assertive Bosnian Serb separatist movement that analysts say has at least tacit support from Moscow.
Only days after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the EU decided to almost double the size of its EUFOR peacekeeping force to 1,100 from 600 troops by sending in reserves to stave off potential instability.
Berlin will provide up to 50 troops for EUFOR, marking a return to the force in Bosnia that Germany left at the end of 2012.
Some of the troops are meant to staff two so-called liaison and observation teams, groups that are spread out in the country and that function as sensors for the EUFOR command, while others will work at the headquarters in Sarajevo.
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