Balkans

Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama told Italy’s La Stampa that Kovo’s Prime Minister Albin Kurti is a fortress and maximalist and that he would have acted differently in his place. Asked if he was worried that a new front would be opened in the Balkans after the war in Ukraine, …

Acceptance of the Franco-German proposal for an agreement with Kosovo is a reality that will eventually be surrender, given the context of the negotiations, historian Bojan Dimitrijevic said in an interview with FoNet’s Cosine series. Dimitrijevic believes that the best way to solve the Kosovo problem is a long-term dialogue …

“Ambitions for the formation of a Greater Serbia threaten peace in the Western Balkans. The key to peace is in Brcko District, Serbia’s Achilles Heel,” Writes Alexander Rottert in an article for the Swiss Noah Cirherze Zeitung. “Since November 21, 1995, the term ‘Dayton’ has been denoting a special kind …

Elsewhere, Czechs finally have law to protect whistleblowers; Poland adopts amended version of a panel to investigate ‘Russian influence’; and Slovaks don’t want the next government to help Ukraine militarily.US-Hungarian relations were in the news this week. After Washington imposed sanctions on four top Bosnian Serb officials for undermining a …

Elsewhere, Poland continues to talk tough over preventing Ukrainian grain from flooding its market; radicalised Czech pensioners rise up, again; Slovak paediatricians to no longer take on shifts in children’s emergency rooms from next week. Hungarian PM Viktor Orban did not make the international headlines with this year’s speech in …

A dispute about engraving civilians’ names on a monument to deceased fighters in a small Kosovo town highlighted a wider problem: although most people killed in the 1998-99 war were civilians, most war memorials commemorate guerrillas. For more than 20 years, the name of Adem Ahmetaj’s nephew Jeton could be …

Auditors have flagged “anomalies” worth almost 14 million euros in deals between a Serbian arms factory and a Belgian machinery manufacturer, BIRN can report. In 2017, in the southwestern Serbian town of Pozega, President Aleksandar Vucic cut the ribbon on a factory built to produce ammunition. “Out of nothing, out …

Fight against roots of crime in Kosovo Crime in Kosovo has its roots in the period of Kosovo’s government-in-exile. The epicenter of crime includes the former commanders of the Kosovo Liberation Army (UÇK-OVK) and (para)intelligence services (ShIK), who acted in cooperation with political structures. Although the ShIK was officially dissolved …

A dispute about engraving civilians’ names on a monument to deceased fighters in a small Kosovo town highlighted a wider problem: although most people killed in the 1998-99 war were civilians, most war memorials commemorate guerrillas. For more than 20 years, the name of Adem Ahmetaj’s nephew Jeton could be …

New report from Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime says the Western Balkans has become a key gateway for Russian cash to flow illicitly across borders thanks to the weak rule of law and high presence of orgnised crime there. A new report by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized …