In 2021, Djokovic found himself criticised for his visit to Bosnia after photographs surfaced of his meeting with a commander of the “Drina Volves”, a unit that took part in the 1995 Srebrenica genocide where more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were summarily executed over the course of three days in July solely for their nominal Muslim faith.
Later on, a video showed Djokovic singing at a wedding, embraced by the Bosnian Serb nationalist leader Milorad Dodik, whose separatist tendencies are currently causing the biggest crisis in the country since the end of the 1992-1995 war.
His stances on Kosovo are widely known. The former province of Serbia that broke away after the 1999 NATO bombing and a decade of ethnic cleansing policies against ethnic Albanians spearheaded by Slobodan Milošević is a weak point for many Serbian nationalists and politicians.
After large protests broke out in Belgrade over Kosovo’s declaration of independence in 2008, Djokovic famously recorded a video saying “We are prepared to defend what is rightfully ours. Kosovo is Serbia.”
Asked in 2011 whether he regretted his actions, he told German magazine Der Spiegel “it is the birthplace of my family and, indeed, of Serbian culture itself.”
“I don’t regret what I did. We want justice, but we just can’t get it,” he said.
After the Serbian national team won the ATP Cup in 2020, Djokovic, together with his teammates, sang nationalist songs, including “Vidovdan” — a common tune about Kosovo that featured prominently during the wars of the disintegration of Yugoslavia.
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