Military veteran Zdravko Ponos, an opposition candidate for president in an election in April, tells BIRN that Serbia will struggle to recover from five more years of Aleksandar Vucic. As a candidate for Serbia’s highest office, Zdravko Ponos could hardly have a better biography: a highly-educated military man, former head …

Hungary’s flirtation with the Russian president did not start with Orban, but it is the current premier who has turned it into an unequal marriage. How did a politician who launched his career on the back of anti-Russian slogans end up becoming Putin’s main ally in the EU? In June …

The defining characteristic of Albania’s brutal communist regime was its morbid fixation with borders – and the memory of that claustrophobic world helps explains why, today, so many Albanians want to escape. Icrossed Albania’s borders on a cold day of January 1991, for the first time of my life. It …

More than two dozen Serbian women remain trapped in refugee camps in Syria, waiting so far in vain to be repatriated by the Serbian state. Whispered messages via banned mobile phones provide a chilling glimpse of their day-to-day plight.

In a dramatic spectacle on February 15, the Russian State Duma adopted a nonbinding resolution urging President Vladimir Putin to recognize the separatist-claimed parts of eastern Ukraine as independent states. Coming amid international alarm bells about the major concentration of Russian military forces along the border with Ukraine and in …

During the last decade researchers on Ukrainian politics have been noting the increasing activity of the right and ultra-right political forces and the boost in their popularity. It is worth noting that the left flank in Ukrainian political life was totally suppressed by the Ukrainian nationalists. Rhetoric of some political …

Conflict prevention, counter-terrorism and support to Afghanistan, top the list of issues on which the UN and the Collective Security Treaty Organization – a Eurasian regional grouping comprising Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, the Russian Federation and Tajikistan – should bolster their cooperation, Secretary-General António Guterres told the Security Council on …

In the National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA), savings are established as the difference between disposable money income and monetary outlays. Disposable income is defined as the summation of all personal money income less tax payments to the government. Personal income includes wages and salaries, transfer payments, income from interest …

Hamas leaders are not sitting among their people in the Gaza Strip or the West Bank. It is easier and safer for them to call on the Palestinians to send their children to carry out terrorist attacks against Israel while they are relaxing in the comfort of their hotel rooms, …

Mentre Usa ed Europa cercano di mettere a punto un pacchetto di sanzioni contro la Russia per la questione dell’Ucraina, Mosca ha già agito: anzitutto vietando l’esportazione dei fertilizzanti azotati. Una mossa con pesanti ripercussioni: eccole Mentre la Casa Bianca e i governi europei cercavano faticosamente di immaginare eventuali sanzioni …