(CNN) — The Trump administration has lifted sanctions on a kleptocratic ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was removed this month as president of the Serb territory within Bosnia and Herzegovina for chipping away at the US-brokered peace deal that ended bloody ethnic violence in the Balkans in the 1990s.

The waiving of sanctions on Milorad Dodik followed a months-long lobbying effort by allies of Donald Trump, which painted the Serb nationalist leader as a defender of “Christian values” in a country with a large Muslim population, and a victim of the sort of “lawfare” waged against the US president.

Dodik had been sanctioned by the US for flouting the Dayton Peace Agreement, which was painstakingly thrashed out in Ohio in 1995 to end the Bosnian War. While the agreement sto

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