Balkaninsight.com

Thirty years have passed since Yugoslavia’s last Youth Day ‘slet’, an annual event which was designed to make nations work out their differences.

Ever-shifting hurdles, large and small, mountable and seemingly insurmountable, seem to be the common theme of some of our articles this week, interspersed with the region’s rising and falling stars. 

The defence at the war crimes trial of former Serbian State Security official Franko Simatovic insisted he was not in command of the Red Berets unit in 1995 when it allegedly committed crimes.

Moldova's President met the wealthy Russian businessman Igor Chaika in St Petersburg on Thursday – prompting speculation that their talks touched on Chaika's interest in 'mining' bitcoin in Moldova's breakaway 'crypto-friendly' region.

Albania has again been criticized for poor conditions of its only prison for psychiatric patients by a Council of Europe committee.

The owner of Kosovo’s Medicus clinic and his head anaesthetist were convicted of human trafficking and organised crime after a court found they carried out illegal transplant operations to sell kidneys to patients.

The Serbian Orthodox Church in Montenegro and devotees of Romanov dynasty have marked the anniversary of the murder of Nicholas II and Russia's imperial family.

Nineteen years ago, as NATO bombed Yugoslavia, Serbian forces lined up ethnic Albanian prisoners at Kosovo’s Dubrava jail and killed scores of them with guns and grenades - but no one has ever been prosecuted.

As many Slavs mark the Day of Sts Cyril and Methodius, founders of the Glagolitic alphabet, BIRN travels to the Macedonian town of Ohrid, where their disciples, Clement and Naum, created and spread the Cyrillic alphabet.

Macedonian viewers on Wednesday tuned into the first live televised debate between a Prime Minister and an opposition leader in 16 years to hear them thrash out the big issues of the day.

Kosovo citizens still need visas for EU states due to their country’s poor track record on the rule of law – but can the judiciary’s attempts to fix the problem work?

The message of the Sofia summit was that the Western Balkan states can join the EU, but only once it is stronger and more stable – and no one can predict when this will happen.

A Bosnian canton and the state government are heatedly arguing over the recent case of a blocked convoy of migrants – with each side accusing the other of criminal actions.

A series of acquittals in high-profile corruption cases puts the credibility of Romanian anti-graft prosecutors at risk as they battle political moves to restrict their power, analysts warn. 

European Commission and European Central Bank reports on Wednesday dashed Bulgaria’s hopes of joining the 'waiting area' for the single currency before the end of its Presidency.

A coalition campaigning for the establishment of the RECOM fact-finding commission on the 1990s wars said that it plans for the cross-regional body to start work in 2022.

The European Court of Human Rights is to decide whether there is a legal basis for a lawsuit against Montenegro in a case related to the wartime deportation of 83 Bosniak refugees, who were later killed.

Worried by a surge in illegal migration, Bosnia is to deploy more police to the border to prevent a growth in the migrant flow, the country's Prime Minister announced.

Members of two separate conservative citizens' initiatives, ‘The People Decide’ and ‘Truth about Istanbul Convention’, who began collecting signatures on Sunday for separate referendums, say they are doing remarkably well.

The government has started working on a new plan to transform its current Security Force, KSF, into a regular army – after constitutional amendments to achieve this were deemed impossible, owing to a veto by ethnic Serbian MPs.