Editors’ note: This article is published in a six-part series. You can read the entire series here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 6.

On my way to Majevica, I stopped for the night in Ugljevik, to the northeast of Lopare. The name Ugljevik is derived from “ugalj,” the local word for coal. The first thing that struck me was the smell of sulfur in the air. If you stand near the middle of town and look down one long street, you can see a lone coal-burning power plant, “Ugljevik I.” The entity-owned company RiTE Ugljevik—Rudnik i Termolektrana Ugljevik (Mine and Thermal Power Plant Ugljevik) operates the power plant and a complex of open-pit mines near the town.

I walked through the town with Andrijana Pekić, who lives and teaches in Ugljevik. I remarked on the air quality, and Andrijana replied that bronchitis and cancer are common among local residents. She commented that during the Yugoslav period, Ugljevik was one of the most pleasant towns in the region, but that is in the past. She explained, 

The power plant was built in 1984.When they built the plant, it started producing sulfurous fumes that polluted the air. Local people did not complain, but the winds blew the smog north to Hungary, and the Hungarians protested. Eventually, RiTE installed filters. The air is better—when the filters work.

For years there have been plans to build an additional coal-burning power plant at Ugljevik, but that project has long been stalled. Meanwhile, Ugljevik I is counted as Europe’s second-most polluting coal plant. Meanwhile, in addition to sickness, one problem after another plagues residents who live nearby: houses are destabilized to the point where they are leaning toward the plant, with cracked foundations; constant truck traffic passes by the houses; and the power plant releases clouds of ash on the neighborhood. 

One resident of the village near the coal mine has stated that the mine catches fire ten times a year, and that “when the mining company puts out the fire, the whole village is covered in a toxic black smoke.” Residents have expressed the desire to move away, but the small sum they could receive for their houses—if they can sell them at all—would not come close to covering the purchase of an apartment.

Coal in context

For anyone who is even somewhat informed about climate change and the accompanying disasters that are unfolding throughout the world with ever greater frequency, the first thing that should jump out about the Ugljevik story is the blatant folly of any use of coal as fuel. Nevertheless, Bosnia-Herzegovina is solidly under the curse; it possesses immeasurable deposits of the material, with 2.5 billion tons of it said to be accessible reserves. 

There are 14 active coal mines in Bosnia—not counting numerous unregistered, privately owned ones. Their annual production is 13.5 million tons. Ten of the mines are state-owned, and four others are privately owned. There are five coal-powered plants; other than Ugljevik I, there are plants in Tuzla, Kakanj, Gacko, and Stanari. An estimated 95% of Bosnia’s coal that is not exported is used in these power plants. 

The power derived from these plants provides the country with 70% of its electricity, with the remainder coming from hydroelectric and other sources. In addition to domestic usage, Bosnia is the only exporter of electricity in the region—electrical power is Bosnia’s top export. In 2022, Bosnia exported 31 million KM (about $20 million) of coal—nearly all of it to Serbia.

Beside contributing to global warming (admittedly on a much smaller scale than richer countries), Bosnia suffers greatly from its dependence on coal. Toxic dust and sulfur dioxide poisoning the air and the water around the coal mines and power plants contribute to the evaluation that Bosnia-Herzegovina has among the highest levels of air pollution in the world. Mining processes lead to soil contamination and erosion, with disposal of contaminated tailings an unsolvable problem. Taken together, these problems increasingly harm biodiversity in numerous ecosystems. 

Poor management of coal mines has plagued Bosnia for many years. After a five-year study, Transparency International reported “numerous examples of unscrupulous business practices, suspicious public procurement, irrational business decisions, and money laundering.” These failings, along with probable over-exporting, have led to shortages of coal. In late 2024 the controlling owner of the mines in the Federation, the energy utility company Elektroprivreda BiH, resorted to buying coal from privately owned mines. Similar problems mounted in the Republika Srpska, where blackouts were looming. 

The Sarajevo-based Elektroprivreda called for an urgent increase in coal production. Pippa Gallop, energy advisor for Bankwatch, responded that such an increase would be like prescribing “paracetamol [acetaminophen] for appendicitis.” It is relevant that Bosnia-Herzegovina is a signatory to the 2020 Declaration on the Green Agenda for the Western Balkans, which commits the country to carbon neutrality by 2050. An analyst from Bosnia’s Aarhus Center, an international organization that promotes good environmental practices, attributed Bosnia’s energy predicament to “years of carelessness,” stating that Bosnia had so far fallen short in building wind farms and solar power installations. 

Indeed, the 2021 “Manifesto of environmental guardians for the future of Bosnia-Herzegovina’s energy,” issued by the Sarajevo organization Eko Akcija, provides an outline for the preservation of the country’s environment while developing sustainable sources of energy. The Manifesto starts out by stating that the climate crisis is not temporary, and that it has been caused by an order which “puts profit above the survival of the entire living world,” and that “the world can only turn back from the edge by decisively adopting a different direction.” The Manifesto provides a simple prescription, ruling out the use of coal and other fossil fuels; nuclear installations; new dams; and the use of organic biomass as fuel. All of these sources have well documented repercussions that one report characterizes as “perpetual impacts.” 

As an alternative, Eko Akcija’s Manifesto prescribes the exclusive use of wind and solar power as sustainable energy sources. The document estimates that the energy available from these systems represents three times the amount of energy presently consumed in Bosnia. There are problems with installation of solar and wind farms regarding land use and proximity to affected communities, but these are surmountable.

Thus, we see the unfortunate situation of a country rich in coal and seemingly trapped in a deadly cycle of extraction and environmental devastation. There arise numerous questions about the functioning of the coal industry: 

Who grants concessions for the mines—especially the smaller, marginally legal ones?

Who underwrites the physical establishment of the mines?

Where does the coal go, and who transports it there? 

Who buys that coal?

These questions are not easily answered; much of what one hears is speculation and rumor. There are insinuations that there is criminality involved. The alleged criminality even crosses international borders, linking mines near Prijedor, and elsewhere, with a “controversial businessman” in Teslić, a criminal network in Kosovo, and an oil magnate from Dagestan. It takes time to sort out what is true, and new questions continue to arise. 

Medna: An open pit coal mine

While I was at Pecka visitor center in Mrkonjić Grad municipality, I had the opportunity to go to the village of Medna, where there is an open pit coal mine. Medna provides an illustration of all the things that can be wrong with a coal mine. 

Sergej Milanović, a forestry engineer and, until recently, a delegate to the Mrkonjić Grad municipal assembly, had publicly campaigned against the mine due to pollution it caused in nearby streams and rivers. He volunteered to take me to the remote hamlet of Medna.

Before the 1990s war, Medna’s population was around 1,500; in the 2013 census it was listed at 200. Boasting a restored 19th-century Orthodox monastery and several solid houses spread out through the valley, Medna is situated in a rustic setting surrounded by mountains and foothills. To the east stands a wall of mud dozens of meters high, reaching up one of the hills. It was our job to climb up that slope to arrive at a coal mine that was the source of all the mud. That slope of mud tailings, merging into firmer soil, resembled a moonscape with a few hardy weeds growing out of it. Moving up the slope, we reached what turned out to be the crest of an open-pit coal mine about a hundred meters above the village. There, under the continuing slopes and pinewoods, stretched an open expanse of earth about 12 hectares (30 acres) in size, cut out of the hillside.

It was an off-day at the Medna coal mine, with no workers present, and a lone earth-mover stood still at one edge of the site. The ground was uneven, with small hills here and there. We tarried a while, surveying the ugly pit that the miners had gouged out of the hillside.

The mine is operated by the Mrkonjić Grad-based company Medna NV, which applied for a concession in 2021 and began excavating the next year. It was not long before the villagers experienced problems with their water supply. As we returned down the slope, I was able to witness the pollution myself; Sergej showed me a creek flowing off the mountainside and through the mud. It was clouded, a milky color. It had not run clear for two years, he said. For comparison, he showed me a smaller creek of clear water running into it. The polluted stream, Grabovac, flows through the village into the Medljanka River, which soon joins the headwaters of the Sana, one of Bosnia’s major rivers.

Pollution of the water is not the only damage from the hillside of tailings. Burgeoning slopes of mud are covering up people’s orchards, ancestral farmlands, and pastures. The mine’s tailings threaten to bury houses and barns. One resident of Medna lamented, “I used to tend sheep here, and I drank water from the Grabovac. Now I don’t even know where it is, what I used to have. Those are the paths from our childhood; they no longer exist.” Another villager complained, 

They have poisoned us here. We won’t even plant our gardens this year. Up there, they have covered my land with tailings. The worst thing is that they are going to poison us. The river is darkened, and there is earth all the way to my woods; it will bury everything. Who is going to deal with this mafia?

Activists from the Green Ways environmental association and the Banja Luka–based Center for the Environment appealed to the Republika Srpska water inspector to evaluate the condition of the stream flowing through Medna. Biologist Nataša Mazalica reported that on the basis of a visual examination, the inspector stated that the coal mine “is not negatively influencing the stream’s water quality” and that “all is in accordance with the law.”

When the RS Institute for Public Health, on the urging of the Center for the Environment, conducted an analysis of the water in the Grabovac, it found that there were traces of mercury, aluminum, nickel, and copper amounting to “more than 15, 20 times the maximum allowable limits.” Ms. Mazalica commented that the water is now, “based on certain parameters, no longer first class, but fifth class water,” completely unusable. Environmentalists further state that the effects of the pollution are visible dozens of kilometers downstream from the village, as far away as Ključ and Sanski Most. 

I asked Sergej if the villagers of Medna had complained about the water degradation, and he answered, “Yes, but they are afraid of the criminal group operating the mine.”

The Republika Srpska Ministry of Spatial Planning, Construction, and the Environment has stated that Medna NV has all the necessary permits for the operation of the mine, including an environmental permit from December 2022—months after the excavation began. Conditions of the concession and permits require that the mining company observes strict measures for the protection of the environment including flora and fauna, the water, air, and soil, as well as management of the tailings, all the way to restoration of the land during and after excavation of the ore. 

These requirements have turned out to be observed only in the realm of fantasy. Furthermore, without approval Medna NV also nearly tripled the size of its open pit mine, from three to almost twelve hectares. 

What I have described so far covers only one part of the destruction caused by the company’s operations. There is also the problem of sorting the coal. Early on, the company began to deposit truckloads of the material along the side of the main road above the village, where it would crush and sort out the coal, and load it onto hundreds of trucks for removal. Local residents commented that some of the trucks bore license plates from Serbia. Among other hazards, there were no signs warning of the activity, thereby posing a danger to ordinary traffic. Regulations require that the separation procedure take place at least 25 meters from a public road, but in this case, it was as close as one meter away. The mining company started the disruptive sorting operation by the side of the main road without a permit. In early 2023 the entity inspectorate discovered this and fined Medna NV. The municipality subsequently granted the company a permit—and the company continued its roadside operation without interruption throughout the process. 

As one observes the damage to Medna village and its inhabitants, and compares the scenario with the attitudes of the mining company and the responsible authorities, an almost surreal contrast comes into focus. On one hand, the villagers’ traditions and lifestyle are essentially destroyed. On the other hand, officials from Medna NV and the municipality insist that the only problems come from some “troublemakers.” For these officials, the word “activist” is a pejorative. For example, Mayor of Mrkonjić Grad Dragan Vođević stated,

Our record books are clean; no one has complained about anything. Perhaps the locals speak among themselves, but we have no official complaint from them. The company bought some properties and paid accordingly, so that we have no problem with them.

It is true that some of the villagers were paid for some of their land, but they have made it clear that they did not consider this compensation for what they have lost. Officials from Medna NV claim that they have paid all the villagers from whom they bought or rented property, and that “the notion that the community is dissatisfied does not hold water.” The mining company representatives further assert:

The only real opponents of our work are the two associations, the Center for the Environment and Green Ways… They place manipulated scenarios in some media, with the goal of satisfying foreign centers that finance them. [With this goal] they display their activism, and they document the number of lawsuits, petitions, and media articles they have created.

The entire scenario of lawlessness and disregard for nature’s beauty leads to a situation where a very few men profit, and a community suffers and retreats. The perpetual dynamic of corruption is something that nearly every Bosnian comprehends, but only a few are prepared to fight it.

One villager characterized the mining company and its enablers as a “mafia,” and we have heard that the residents of Medna do not complain out of fear of the “criminal group operating the mine.” This helps explain why the mayor of Mrkonjić Grad can claim that there are no complaints. 

We have seen that the inspectors from various agencies at the municipal and entity level are willing collaborators in the extraction process, ever ready to turn a blind eye to the destruction, and to lie about it. We have seen that the mayor of the municipality in question has spoken in support of the exploitation and has attempted to exonerate the mining company. It is interesting that in early 2023 this same Mayor Vođević, nevertheless, commented that “the municipality does not obtain great benefit from the coal mines,” adding that to that date the municipality had received 50,000 KM (about $30,000) from the mining company. It would be difficult to conjecture, then, what benefit makes it worthwhile for the mayor to act as such a proponent of the operation. 

In late May of this year, combined police forces from both entities carried out a raid that reinforced the impression that there is an organized infrastructure that exists to illegally facilitate the export of coal to Serbia. Operation “Kocka” resulted in the arrest of 17 policemen and three businessmen in and around Sanski Most in the Krajina, in northwestern Bosnia. The suspects are accused of taking bribes and using their positions to expedite transport of coal, while turning a blind eye to illegal mining and the use of overloaded vehicles. 

Sergej Milanović did not speak in detail about what he termed the “criminal group that operates the mine,” but he did inform me that Srđan Klječanin, from Teslić, controls the exploitation. “These are his machines. He opens the mines and sets up everything. The concessions are owned by people who do not have any capital: they are fictitious companies. They are legally liable, but nothing can happen to them. There are laws that are supposed to protect the environment, but they are not implemented. So there is no accountability; this dynamic is above the law.” 

While Sergej’s statement, corroborated in the press, identifies the next level up the chain of coal extraction and delivery, it does not point to criminality per se. It should be noted that Mr. Klječanin is a member of President Dodik’s SNSD party and serves as a member of the Teslić municipal council. But let us look at Klječanin’s record: 

• In 2019, he was observed beating a member of a rival political party in front of local police. 
• He was under investigation for several years after his company, Drvo-Eksport, illegally plundered trees worth more than a million KM. Mr. Klječanin explained that he used the income from this “massacre,” as some have called it, to finance a political campaign. He and six other colleagues were charged with illegal exploitation of the forest; destruction of evidence; coverup via forgery; and concealment of goods shipment in February 2025. 
• In 2023 Klječanin began excavating a new coal mine at Bistrica, near Prijedor, without the necessary environmental permit. 
• In mid-2024 Klječanin, along with several other people, was under prosecutorial investigation for allegedly participating in an after-midnight attack that put two men in the hospital, as the result of a dispute that started in a discotheque. 

Again, even these items do not necessarily point to the existence of a “criminal group” that is managing the mine at Medna, as well as other mines. Readers can come to their own conclusions as to Klječanin’s regard for the law. 

Bistrica and Bukova Kosa: An unrestrained menace against two Prijedor villages

Not long after Medna NV, with help from Drvo-Export, established the open pit mine at Medna, Drvo-Export began work on two mines near Prijedor, at Bistrica and at Bukova Kosa. Both mines aroused the resentment, and soon the obstruction, of the villagers. Among other things, they objected to the noise and toxic dust that was emanating from the mines; the heavy traffic of up to 100 trucks a day disrupting their lives; the casual usurpation of private property; and contamination of soil, ground water, and the nearby Crljenjača River. In short, the dangers were the same as in Medna. 

The Center for the Environment characterized the potential danger from the two mines as “catastrophic” for the health of the nearby residents, noting that the lignite coal has an unusually high sulfur content. Miroslav Stakić, an activist from the Bukova Kosa area, commented that “in the Republika Srpska it is easier to open a mine than a newsstand… we have seen this many times, how they ‘cook the books’ (peglaju papire).” He explained that an investor will file for a concession for a small plot, thereby avoiding the need for an environmental impact statement, and once he receives the concession, will then expand the work area well beyond the stipulations of the concession. In the case of Bukova Kosa, Drvo-Export calculated the mining area to be 9.5 hectares, but then, according to Stakić, “almost 20 hectares have been devastated.”

Both mines were started without environmental permits, nor was there public discussion of the projects. One landowner in Bistrica, active in the resistance against the mines, was pressured to cooperate with the exploration of the land by selling his parcel, but he refused. But the way was nevertheless opened for Klječanin and his Drvo-Export company to begin shipping coal from the Prijedor area to Serbia in 2023. As with Medna, residents noted that many of the trucks involved were from Serbia.

In mid-2023 residents of Bistrica created a blockade and a continuous camp near the entrance to the mine, with the goal of halting the mining project. In response, the Prijedor city council requested that the mine’s construction temporarily be halted and that entity agencies inspect relevant contracts and present a report to the council. Mayor of Prijedor Slobodan Javor demurred, saying that the city did not have access to the documents. 

Finally, the Center for the Environment, together with about 30 residents of the village, filed a lawsuit before the District Court of Banja Luka to put a stop to the mining at Bukova Kosa because the work had been initiated in early 2023 without an environmental permit; that permit was not issued until eight months later, in January of 2024. 

A news posting reported that an opposition member of the Republika Srpska Parliament grilled Bojan Vipotnik, RS Minister of Spatial Planning, Construction, and Ecology. She asked, “How is it possible that the Ministry allowed the project holder to extract coal without an environmental impact study? Secondly, how do you plan to restore everything to its original state?”

The Minister finessed the first question, saying that “it is possible that the [entity-level] ministry issued the environmental permit.” On the second question, he said, “I would respond with a counter-question—why should everything have to be restored to its original state?”

One of the purposes of filing an environmental review as a step toward receiving an environmental permit is that it documents the original condition of the land in question. In the cases of Bistrica and Bukova Kosa, lacking that preliminary environmental review, there is no such documentation. This fact contributed to the Banja Luka court’s decision, in October 2024, to annul the environmental permit for the mine at Bistrica. This constituted a temporary victory for the environmentalists and local activists of Prijedor. However, by spring 2025 it was clear that the community had been deceived, as the mining company ignored the court order and continued excavating. In that period, Drvo-Eksport manager Srđan Klječanin declared that he was not determined to continue operating the mine—but that he would discontinue the work only when he was reimbursed for the eight million KM that the company had invested in the project. 

Criminal connections with Serbia

A Radio Free Europe report revealed that of the heavy equipment for digging and loading on the site at Bistrica, more than half of the machines not only carried license plates from Serbia, but also displayed the name “Inkop Ćuprija.” Ćuprija is a town in central Serbia, and Inkop is owned by the “controversial businessman” Zvonko Veselinović.

RFE was unable to confirm the current ownership or loan agreement pertaining to the use of the machines, and Srđan Klječanin denied that Veselinović had anything to do with the mines in Bosnia. On the other hand, in October of 2022 Nebojša Tegeltija, co-owner of Medna NV, posted a photograph on Instagram showing himself standing arm in arm with Veselinović. This, together with markings on the excavation machines, points to an answer to the question about the to the end usage of coal exported from Bosnia-Herzegovina to Serbia. 

In late 2021 the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control placed Veselinović under sanctions and called him “one of Kosovo’s most notorious corrupt figures.” Sanctions Watch states that Veselinović is known for “illicit trafficking of goods, money, narcotics, and weapons between Kosovo and Serbia.” He is close to Serbian provocateurs who have mounted armed incursions from Serbia into Kosovo and attacked Kosovo police with firearms. 

The apparent connection with Veselinović adds weight to the assertion that the coal extraction and exportation operation is managed by a “criminal group.” While neither Sergej Milanović nor other environmental activists I met were prepared to name end-users in Serbia, Croatian investigative journalist Domagoj Margetić had no such reservations. Margetić exhibited confidence in his information about the complete chain of transaction Medna and Prijedor all the way to Serbia. 

On social media, Margetić writes about the mines near Prijedor, which have spontaneously caught on fire; the overloaded trucks that spread toxic dust through the nearby villages while destroying the roads they travel on; and the runoff from the mines that turns the nearby streams and lakes red with oxidized sulfur. He states that officials in the Republika Srpska 

conceal this pollution by the illegal mines so that [President of Serbia] Aleksandar Vučić and Milorad Dodik, Zvonko Veselinović, and Srđan Klječanin can continue smuggling illegal coal to Serbia. Thus Vučić and Dodik earn money by poisoning Serbs in the Republika Srpska and through criminal mining.

Margetić did not substantiate his inclusion of the leaders of the RS and Serbia in an illicit coal operation. But based on the material I have presented here, the line between legal and illegal coal extraction and exportation has been blurred, if not erased. In Bosnia-Herzegovina the clear absence of rule of law, from top to bottom, makes all but inevitable a chain of corruption that facilitates the ransacking of the environment in the interest of profit for a few. 

Blackout in Ugljevik; ties to a Russian oligarch

In late 2024, news came out that the coal-burning power plant at Ugljevik was shut down for lack of fuel. Notwithstanding the billions of tons of accessible coal in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the administration of the power plant announced that it had only two days’ coal reserves. A news report on this emergency noted that in 2024, the Republika Srpska exported 1.6 billion KM (more than a billion dollars) worth of coal to Serbia.

The news report, titled “Serdarovu ugalj, Ugljeviku jalovina” (Coal to Sardarov, tailings to Ugljevik), quotes a worker at the power plant as saying, “For every truckload of coal they send us, we get nine truckloads of tailings. They are sending the better part of it to Rashid Sardarov.” 

Sardarov, originally from Dagestan, is a Russian billionaire oligarch owning farms, corporations, and luxury possessions spread far and wide. Sardarov’s Comsar Energy Group Ltd has been involved in power plant development proposals in Bosnia for over ten years. In 2015, the company acquired a controlling share in the Ugljevik power plant and coal mines, with the promise that it would construct a second power plant in that location. That promise was never fulfilled, and now the Republika Srpska government is in the unusual position of having to buy back the concession that it gave to Comsar. 

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In Ugljevik living without heat in the dead of winter is a hardship; during the winter of 2024-2025 Andrijana Pekić wrote me that her family was shivering in their apartment. Summing up the ongoing environmental disaster resulting from Bosnian corruption and international greed, she wrote, “This is all terrible for our people; we here won’t have a future and we won’t live decently unless the corruption is completely rooted out. It has entered into every pore of our society. But it is never too late to change the situation.”