Balkans

When Përparim Rama entered the political scene in Kosovo during the 2021 local elections, many considered him a breath of fresh air for the governance of Prishtina. This was because he did not come from party structures, but it was also due to his professional background as an architect with …

But it had a dark side to it, nevertheless. Some 300,000 ethnic Turks were forced to leave their homes in the 1980s, after the regime attempted to Bulgarian-ise them by force. Information about the Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster in the Ukraine of 1986 was concealed from the population, while debris …

“A few weeks before the 2024 election campaign in Bosnia and Herzegovina started, my phone rang – it was a top-ranking person in the city administration and the ruling party. This person had never called me before nor have they since,” recounted Aleksandar Drakulic, the owner of a local news …

Kosovo’s local elections on October 12 come at a time of unusual strain. What should have been a routine democratic exercise has instead become a test of whether the country can sustain its institutions, integrate its Serb minority, and manage the costs of decisions taken in pursuit of sovereignty. The …

“A few weeks before the 2024 election campaign in Bosnia and Herzegovina started, my phone rang – it was a top-ranking person in the city administration and the ruling party. This person had never called me before nor have they since,” recounted Aleksandar Drakulic, the owner of a local news …

“Tell them you’re only offering educational materials,” one said into the camera. “Nothing more.” The raid was one of 22 carried out the same day in Serbia, Bulgaria and Cyprus, coordinated by Europol and involving considerable manpower and intelligence from Germany. Four call centres were hit, all of them in …

No one seems to care about the beaten woman. Instead, those who performed their civic duty are in the dock while their attackers – who clearly pulled strings – remain at liberty. Their escape from justice is hardly unusual. If they are off the hook because of kickbacks and political …

BIRN details the creation of a shadowy, heavily-armed and potentially illegal police unit at the exclusive, 24-hour beck and call of the man who led Bosnia’s border police for nine years and is now a fugitive from arrest. On December 30, 2014, the then head of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s border …

Their plight was already dire, but in the evening of June 21, 2024, things got even worse for Bilal and the other refugees and migrants trying to cross the border of Bosnia and Herzegovina with European Union member Croatia. Asylum seekers euphemistically call it ‘The Game’ – the moment they …

Launched at the 2023 Group of Twenty (G20) summit in New Delhi, the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) features three pillars that integrate existing and future infrastructure: a transportation pillar—the corridor’s backbone—integrating rail and maritime networks, an energy pillar with interconnected energy and electricity infrastructure across continents, and a digital …