What сomes after the war: Bosnia's lesson for Ukraine

This op-ed was co-authored with Kateryna Kyrychenko, a Ukrainian international lawyer and Head of Ukraine Legal Affairs and Programme Management at the Public International Law & Policy Group (PILPG). Her work covers international criminal law, accountability for Russian war crimes, peace negotiations and transitional justice. She is pursuing a PhD in international criminal law at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.

On a sunny September afternoon, Kyiv almost seemed at peace. People sat outside the Food Market, talking and eating. Between meetings, we discussed Bosnia's and Ukraine's shared experience. For one of us, war is a memory shaping life three decades later; for the other, an immediate reality of air-raid alerts, sleepless nights and uncertainty about the next Russian attack. We returned to one question: what does it mean for war to end?

A month earlier in Sarajevo, a meeting with Ukrainian officials and civil-society representatives had focused on how Bosnia and Herzegovina handled post-war return and reconstruction. Families crossed former front lines to reclaim homes; property disputes took years, and people returned to areas governed by forces that had driven them out. These challenges are familiar to Bosnians. For Ukrainians still at war, the question was not simply how people had managed to return, but what it had taken to rebuild their lives in places from which they had once been driven.

Pressure to negotiate is mounting in Kyiv, yet little attention goes to a peace framework with credible guarantees. After more than 12 years of Russian aggression, including nearly five of full-scale invasion, Ukraine's weariness is understandable. Millions have lost homes, loved ones or livelihoods; families have been separated for years, and communities live between air-raid alerts and the next attack. They want the war to end, but exhaustion is not willingness to accept peace at any price. Distant negotiators may see this desire for relief as a chance for a quick deal. What seems a breakthrough in Washington or a European capital can have different consequences for those living with its terms. Bosnia shows the gap between signing an agreement and the reality that follows.

Ending the war is only the beginning

Dayton, Ohio, is remembered for producing the 1995 peace agreement that ended the Bosnian war. Its annexes covered the constitution, military arrangements, elections, human rights and refugee return. Unlike an archived document, it had force behind it: some 60,000 NATO-led Implementation Force (IFOR) troops separated armies, oversaw territorial transfers and enforced military provisions. Peace required troops on the ground, and the money and governments willing to keep them involved after Bosnia left the front pages.

Ukraine knows the limits of a mission without enforcement powers. From March 2014, the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission monitored the security situation, established facts and reported violations, while also facilitating dialogue and supporting local ceasefire arrangements; it had no power to enforce compliance. Its mandate expired on 31 March 2022 because OSCE consensus on an extension could not be reached owing to Russia's position. The Minsk agreements, meant to end hostilities in eastern Ukraine, proved vulnerable to manipulation: repeated ceasefire violations, unresolved security questions and incompatible readings of political provisions. They neither secured peace nor prevented Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022. For Ukraine, the question is not whether another agreement can be signed but what would make it different from arrangements Russia has already violated: who would verify compliance, respond to renewed attacks and impose consequences?

Dayton was possible under different conditions: the parties accepted IFOR's deployment and undertook to facilitate its operations, while the UN Security Council authorised the force. Russia, by contrast, is Ukraine's aggressor and holds a UN Security Council veto. A guarantee it can veto offers little protection. Ukraine's security cannot rest on monitoring or diplomatic assurances: its ability to defend itself, maintain military capabilities and choose security partnerships must be central to any settlement. Restricting its self-defence while Russia can rearm risks another war.

Civilian implementation was equally demanding. Dayton created the Office of the High Representative, but implementation soon exposed serious obstacles. In December 1997, the Peace Implementation Council in Bonn supported the exercise of what became known as the Bonn Powers: the High Representative could impose binding decisions on specified implementation issues and remove officials who obstructed Dayton commitments.

Ukraine faces a less favourable international environment. Beyond Russia's veto, other major powers' interests may not align with its security needs. Those conditions cannot simply be recreated. Proposals for Ukraine must start from this reality, not assume guarantees will enforce themselves.

The unfinished business of peace

Property return showed that work went beyond the text. Annex 7 gave refugees and displaced people the right to return home and have their property restored, or to receive compensation where restoration was impossible. Laws and administrative procedures were developed and enforced, with municipalities monitored and pressed to comply. People could receive house keys yet find the hardest part of return ahead. For some returnees, especially those returning as an ethnic minority, the label "returnee" can be a reminder that the return of property does not necessarily restore their place in society.

Much will be familiar in Ukraine: destroyed or occupied homes, separated families and repeated displacement. The scale of destruction, mines and unexploded ordnance, displacement of millions and Russia's systematic efforts to alter the demographic, legal and cultural realities of occupied territories will compound Ukraine's challenges. Restoring Ukrainian governance requires more than replacing flags or reopening offices. It must address documented pressure to obtain Russian citizenship, property expropriation, the replacement of Ukrainian education and the suppression of Ukrainian identity, forcible transfers or deportations of civilians, including children, to the Russian Federation, arbitrary detention by Russian forces or occupation authorities, and the consequences of occupation.

War's end brings difficulties beyond rebuilding homes and institutions: disputes over education, integration, national symbols, history, heroes and victims. Who decides what schools teach, whose suffering is recognised and whose history becomes official? Bosnia has grappled with these issues since 1995; many remain unresolved. Survivors and victims' families still face denial of the Srebrenica genocide, historical revisionism and glorification of convicted war criminals, according to the Srebrenica Memorial. Reconciliation efforts have sometimes emphasised moving forward rather than confronting the past. Ukraine should heed the warning: ending a war and reconciling societies are different things.

Despite its achievements, Dayton left unresolved questions, notably the struggle over the Bosnian state. Its two entities and political system enabled obstruction and challenged state authority. Bosnia's experience is not a warning against decentralisation or minority rights. Nevertheless, trouble begins when arrangements protecting communities let a neighbouring government prevent a country from deciding for itself. For Ukraine, a Russian veto over defence or European integration would be especially dangerous. Russia has sought to use the status of occupied territories to influence Ukraine's internal affairs. A settlement must not institutionalise that interference as political compromise or minority protection.

What happens after the diplomats leave?

We sought no Ukrainian version of Dayton. and Dayton's unfinished business in Bosnia makes it no blueprint. But it stopped the war, and some people returned and homes were rebuilt because outsiders stayed to enforce commitments local politicians resisted.

Ukraine's partners should ask what they will do on the first day after the war, not just what they will sign, propose or pressure others to accept. Bosnians understand Ukraine's reluctance to accept promises without guarantees: they have been down that road and, in many ways, still are.

These answers will matter years later, when another crisis dominates headlines and Ukraine leaves the global spotlight. Who will remain engaged, provide assistance or step in when agreements are violated or institutions fail?

"At least nobody's shooting" was common in post-war Bosnia. It is a painfully modest definition of peace, hardly a foundation for the future, especially for those living with unresolved consequences.

Nedim Jahić and Kateryna Kyrychenko