The European Union Peacekeeping Force in Bosnia (EUFOR) announced that France would conduct high-speed training flights of fighter jets in Bosnian airspace, following the deterioration of the global security situation.

The EU last week decided to increase its EUFOR force to 1,100 from 600, deploying reserve forces from Austria, Bulgaria, Romania, and Slovakia to prevent possible destabilisation following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Bosnia is hundreds of kilometres away from the fighting in Ukraine but Western analysts fear Moscow is supporting, at least tacitly, what they dub a Serbian separatist movement.

“The aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle is conducting operational training in the Mediterranean Sea and from Monday (March 7th) its Rafale aircraft will be flying over the Western Balkans, including Bosnia and Herzegovina,” according to EUFOR.

Senior NATO and European Union officials have warned that war instability in Ukraine could extend to the Western Balkans, Moldova and Georgia.

Bosnia, like Ukraine, has long expressed its desire to join NATO, irritating Russia. Moscow said in March last year that it would react if Bosnia took steps towards joining the US-controlled North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.

The Bosnian Serbs, led by Milorad Dodik, want the country to remain neutral outside NATO.

Dodik, representing the Serb element in Bosnia’s tripartite presidency, provoked the worst political crisis since the end of the war in the 1990s, forcing state actors to secede and join neighbouring Serbia as part of a long-running Serb struggle.

EUFOR, which replaced NATO peacekeepers in Bosnia in 2004, has 3,500 troops, 600 of whom have been deployed in the country.