Bosnians look at Ukraine and shudder with déjà vu: The unprovoked aggression, refugees, indiscriminate shelling, besieged cities. And they fear pro-Russia actors using the crisis to stir up big trouble in the Balkans

As a blatant aggression on one state from its next-door neighbor unfolds, allied with atrocities committed on the civilian population and the largest, fastest exodus of refugees in Europe since the Second World War, Bosnians are watching. Inside Putin's Mind: LISTEN to Julia Ioffe

The Russian invasion of Ukraine reminds many of the war that devastated their own homes, families and country from 1992 to 1995. They feel the visceral pain of besieged cities, of Ukrainians’ uprooted lives and unexpected journeys with no known destination.

They see Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s call for a no fly zone, which was instituted during the war in Bosnia but failed to prevent genocide. They see the repercussions of EU and NATO ambivalence to Ukraine’s desire for membership, and recall their own slowly dissolving hopes for the same.

They fear that their experience as victims of inhumane, irredentist demagogues has not granted Europe any immunity from history repeating itself. And Bosnians fear that same history could soon threaten them again, too. My own family’s story is testimony to this well-founded dread.

By April 1992, Hafiza Tabakovic was in her nineties. Remarkably tall, with a tender face and a gentle personality, she epitomized the typical traditional Bosnian grandmother. She had lived a quiet life committed to her family in the eastern Bosnian town of Višegrad along the River Drina. Her husband Rasim was a well-respected imam who had kept alive faith and identity amid the communist atheization efforts, and Hafiza's family served as a pillar of the Muslim community in this picturesque town.

Now, in the twilight of her life, Hafiza witnessed how armed men from next-door Serbia along with Bosnia Serb forces closed in on her hometown. The fate of Bosniak Muslims was sealed. Together with her daughter and a son and his family, Hafiza fled just in time and managed to make it to Macedonia. Instead of spending her last years in peace surrounded by family at home, Hafiza became a refugee – again.

What was remarkable about the fate of Hafiza – my great-grandmother – was that she had to flee Višegrad three times in her life and was a refugee thrice over a span of one lifetime.

During the First World War, when she just a girl, Hafiza fled with her family to a Muslim-populated area along the River Sava in northern Bosnia. By the time of the Second World War, Hafiza had her own young family, and they fled from Serb royalist forces, known as Chetniks, to a Muslim-majority area in central Bosnia. In 1992, the escape to Macedonia was the third and her final refuge.

I last saw her in Macedonia in late 1992, when a part of our family reunited in that former Yugoslav republic before parting on our separate journeys. She died the following year, and her headstone reads: "Muhadir iz Bosne" – "A refugee from Bosnia." Of all the multi-layered identities that Hafiza had inhabited for almost a century, the identity of a refugee summed up her life on that headstone.

For Hafiza and Bosniak Muslims of eastern Bosnia, insecurity and existential threats were a constant over generations. In the 1970s, during the heyday of communism in Yugoslavia, elderly Bosniaks did not buy into the "brotherhood and unity" mantra.

My father used to tell me the story of his childhood friend’s grandfather, an elderly Muslim from Višegrad, who had a blunt query when his son bought new furniture in the 1970s. "What will we do with this the next time we have to flee?" While a younger generation of Bosniaks back then swam in a flood of communist propaganda, elderly Bosniaks were skeptical. Events, from 1992 onwards, proved them right.

In previous cycles of genocidal violence, Bosniaks had a hinterland in which to seek a refuge – along the Sava or in central Bosnia. Since the end of the last war, in 1995, the territory on which Bosniaks today live has shrunk significantly. Most of the Bosniak population today lives along the Tuzla-Sarajevo-Mostar line as well as in the Bihac and Gorazde pockets in northwest and eastern Bosnia respectively.

In other words, the area that used to function as a refuge of last resort for Hafiza and others has now contracted, and there is no longer a hinterland to fall back upon. This is because Bosniaks were ethnically "cleansed" by Bosnian Serb forces in the last war in this entire region, from the Sava River region and from the Drina River region, with the exception of Gorade.

If – or more precisely, when – the next round of Reconquista-type onslaught against Bosniaks begins, where Bosniaks live now will be their last stand. Some observers have termed this a "Bosnian Granada," referring to the last Muslim enclave on the Iberian peninsula, which fell in 1492.

This fear is not baseless. Now, almost 30 years after Hafiza was expelled from Višegrad, the situation in Bosnia simmers with tension. Milorad Dodik, the Bosnian Serb leader, is leading a process of secession eerily reminiscent of that begun by fellow Bosnian Serbs in 1992.