Balkan News

After FIFA fined Croatia's now axed assistant coach Ognjen Vukojevic for his video praising Ukraine, the Ukrainian football assocation has offered him a job.

Over 30,000 Bosnians gathered at the Srebrenica Memorial Centre to commemorate the 23rd anniversary of the genocide and pay their respects as 35 more victims were buried.

Denial of the Srebrenica genocide must end, unprosecuted perpetrators must be tried and schoolchildren must be taught the truth about the massacres in July 1995, says Dunja Mijatovic, the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights.

Following last month’s historic name agreement with neighbouring Greece, NATO is expected to invite Macedonia to start accession talks at the Western alliance's Brussels summit which starts on Wednesday.

Excitement has been rising in Croatia as the national team prepares to take on England in the semi-finals of the football World Cup in Moscow.

At the London summit, the EU and Britain have vowed to increase their support for the Western Balkans to boost security, investment and the fight against organized crime.

The draft statute of the Association of Serb Municipalities, one of the key Belgrade-Pristina deals awaiting implementation, is likely to be complete by early August and to require amendments to Kosovo’s laws, documents obtained by BIRN show.

Kosovo managing team in charge of drafting Association statute find legal changes necessary for the Association to be established.

A former member of the Red Berets unit told the Hague trial of Serbian security officials Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic that the two men personally commanded fighters involved in a wartime operation in western Bosnia.

Kosovo authorities released five Serbs on Tuesday who were detained earlier the same day, after Belgrade stated it will halt EU-mediated talks with Pristina over the arrests.

The disruption of a Serbian Orthodox religious service at the site of a 1,000-year-old church in Montenegro by ethnic Albanian villagers has sparked ethnic tensions.  

The director of the Serbian government’s Kosovo office, Marko Djuric, said that Belgrade will halt its EU-mediated talks with Pristina unless Kosovo releases five Serbs who were arrested on Tuesday.

Romania’s Social Democrat-dominated parliament held an unexpected late-night vote to rush through legislation to regulate offshore Black Sea gas exploitation, angering investors and the opposition.

Football governing body FIFA fined a member of the Croatian national team’s coaching staff for participating in an allegedly political video of support for conflict-hit Ukraine after Croatia defeated Russia at the World Cup.

Serbian police arrested a man suspected of attacking Stefan Cvetkovic, a Serbian journalist who sparked headlines in June when he went missing for several days and was then charged with faking his own abduction.

As the anniversary of Srebrenica approaches, Bosnian journalists recall how the shocking scale of the atrocities slowly became clear in July 1995 as information trickled out and the first eyewitnesses to the massacres spoke to reporters.

Croatia has become a favourite tourist destination for Europeans – but the high prices, ironically, mean that its resorts are now out of reach to many of its own citizens.

Opposition VMRO DPMNE party is dragging its feet over the formation of a new election commission, tasked with holding the planned historic referendum in autumn.

Despite previous promises, leaders of Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia will not sign a declaration to establish the RECOM wartime fact-finding commission at the Western Balkans summit in London.

The Romanian Ministry of Justice said it was seeking a replacement for chief anti-graft prosecutor Laura Coduta Kovesi – who was fired on Monday – amid strong fears on political interference.