Balkan News

Some of the key figures who coordinated the violent intervention of the Romanian riot police in the protests in Bucharest on August 10 have been summoned to hearings in an investigation.

The publication of letters signed by Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj on the recent controversy over war veterans has failed to calm the debate about this issue.

Ahead of a major opposition demonstration on Sunday, pro-government media are trying to discredit the rally, claiming that Russian secret services are masterminding the whole scenario.

Ahead of an announced referendum on Kosovo, the former province is likely to be high on the agenda of the upcoming Synod of the Serbian Orthodox Church - a staunch opponent of Kosovo's independence.

After Serbia's government approved another big cash donation for the yet-to-open Serbian House in Montenegro, a watchdog in Belgrade has questioned legality of the decision.

Further investigations into last year’s mob attack on Macedonian parliament may yet uncover who planned and directed the rampage that left almost 100 people wounded, the prosecution and the police say.

The Centre for Investigative Journalism of Serbia rebuffed the Bosnian Serb President, Milorad Dodik's claims that its editor-in-chief Dino Jahic is financed by the West to help 'topple' governments.

Coming to terms with new realities and (re)discovering old ones seems to be the common theme of our premium selection of articles this week, whether looking at the continuing saga of relations between Belgrade and Pristina, secret Communist security service files or – more pleasantly – interesting tourist spots to visit in the region. 

The trial of former Bosnian Serb Army soldier Radomir Susnjar, charged with participating in the murder of 57 people in the Visegrad area, starts on Friday before the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo expressed strong support for Macedonia’s accession to NATO and the EU, after meeting Macedonian Foreign Minister Nikola Dimitrov on Wednesday in Washington.

Organisers of a traditional Serbian song festival in Petrinja, in Croatia, have accused local Croatian war veterans of trying to stop them – and have taken their complaints to the UN's cultural heritage arm, UNESCO.

Bosnia has sought the extradition of Husein Mujanovic, a former soldier in the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina, who was arrested in Serbia in July for alleged war crimes during the wars of the 1990s.

Ethnic Albanians in the Presevo Valley ‘dream’ of joining Kosovo, but few see it as a silver bullet for life’s daily grind. The result may only be more ethnic strife.

The Moldovan lawyer and director of a human rights NGO Ion Manole fears that his country is heading in a wrong direction – away from democracy and towards becoming an autocratic state.

The national team’s success in the World Cup in Russia this year could only paper over the mess of political interference and corruption that has devoured Croatian football. But one club has taken a different path.

Fr Paolo Cortese, from the northwestern Bulgarian town of Belene, is organising a commemorative pilgrimage around places in Bulgaria that saw atrocities committed on behalf of various authoritarian regimes in the 20th century.

As the row over the war veterans' list rumbles on, Kosovo citizens took to the streets on Wednesday to demand the dismissal the Chief Prosecutor Aleksander Lumezi – alleging that he had undermined the investigation into the issue.

The Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals has extended the provisional release in Serbia for Jovica Stanisic – charged with committing crimes against non-Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia – until January 2019.

Opposition parties in Bosnia's mainly Serbian entity are calling for a special assembly session, devoted to the unexplained death of a 21-year-old man – accusing the entity’s authorities of covering up a murder.

The trial began on Wednesday in Skopje of 30 people – including the former interior minister and five MPs – accused of participating in the violent storming of the country's parliament in 2017.