Balkans

Territory, people, and physical power (security forces like police and army) are the inevitable prerequisites for creating a state. The ethnic Albanians were, at the beginning, intruders into the autonomous province of South-West Serbia – Kosovo-Metochia (KosMet), who constituted a small minority there (in 1455, only 2%). The focal question …

Such social and civic engagement is not new in Bosnia, historically. Throughout the modern history of Bosnia, there is a common thread of engagement on socioeconomic and institutional problems. Even before World War I, there was a history of Socialist political networks and movements. The 1990s war in Bosnia and …

The two countries most affected by the halt in Russian oil supplies via the Druzhba pipeline, Hungary and Slovakia, stepped up their criticism of Ukraine for not restoring the flows promptly enough after it was apparently damaged in a Russian drone attack on Ukrainian territory at the end of January. …

The three days of February 16, 17 and 18, 2026 were a confluence of interrelated events of historical significance for the United States, Kosovo, and the Kosovo Specialist Chambers, which is in the final process of establishing its legacy. On February 16, the US celebrated George Washington’s birthday, the annual …

Both women looked exhausted. They struggled to maintain eye contact, to focus on the conversation. They described feeling constantly on edge, unable to rest, waiting forever for news that never comes. One had five children, the other four. Their husbands were killed in the fighting. Our husbands brought us here, …

With the new Assembly and government, Kosovo aims to recover the delays of the past year. Political analysts are calling on the new executive to focus on improving relations with international allies, while the business sector has requested policies in favour of the private sector Kosovo has formed its new …

Kosovo Bulgaria and Turkey, along with representatives of other countries, joined US President Donald Trump on Wednesday in Davos, Switzerland, at the signing ceremony of the Board of Peace Charter, creating a new international body supposedly aimed at resolving conflicts around the world. Trump, who was presented as the chairman …

Hungarian PM Viktor Orban this week joined Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace” initiative as one of only two EU leaders to do so (alongside Bulgaria). Orban, who has stayed away from the World Economic Forum in Davos in recent years, traveled to Switzerland just to meet Trump and to visibly …

If the polls are to believed, 2026 could finally see the end of the 16 years of dominance of Viktor Orban and his Fidesz party, and pave the way for a relatively unknown and definitely inexperienced new government. Yet defeating Orban at the ballot box might not be enough: retaining …

The Hungarian PM’s cautious response to a new law targeting Slovakia’s ethnic-Hungarian minority is creating credibility issues for his Fidesz party on both sides of the border and perhaps opening up an opportunity for Hungary’s extreme-right to benefit. “We do not accept collective guilt, either in our own country or …