Balkaninsight.com

Russia's President has wished Aleksandar Vucic success in the forthcoming presidential election, despite the Kremlin's claim that it would not interfere in Serbia's electoral process.

A special papal envoy is to spend months among the clergy in Medjugorje, the disputed Marian shrine in Bosnia, which visited by hundreds of thousands of Catholics each year but which the Vatican has never officially recognised.

Serb MPs returned to Kosovo parliament after six months to speed up the formation of an Association of Serb Municipalities but also to try to stop the formation of a Kosovo Army.

Deputy Prime Minister Daniel Constantin has been fired from his post after new skirmishes erupted with his fellow co-chair of ALDE - the junior partner in Romania's government.

Former Bosnian Serb soldier Milos Krsmanovic was indicted for torturing and physically abusing Bosniak civilian detainees in the Rogatica area in 1992 and 1993.

The high-profile security company Intersec - which guarded Paris Hilton during her Serbia visit - has been engaged to stop people removing or defacing PM Aleksandar Vucic’s presidential campaign posters.

Croatia’s main Serb organisation will again boycott the annual state commemoration at the WWII concentration camp Jasenovac because a plaque with an Ustasa fascist slogan was installed near the site.

The dispute over the transformation of Kosovo's armed forces could spell the end of Kosovo's troubled ruling coalition.

Residents of Krusha e Madhe/Velika Krusa commemorated the deaths of 241 people killed in March 1999 by Serbian forces and called for Belgrade to be pressurised to bring the perpetrators to justice.

A new EU report reveals the value in 2015 of Zagreb’s controversial arms trade with Saudi Arabia, which is routinely diverting weapons and ammunition from the Balkans to Syrian rebels.

Amid continuing opposition protests for a caretaker government to take the country to elections in June, analysts suggested that international mediation could be necessary to end the crisis.

Bosnia’s farmers fear the new trade deal with the EU could wipe out domestic farmers - who have been left face the full force of EU competition without support and protection from their government. 

Defying stereotypes about apathetic youngsters, most Serbian millennials at home and abroad plan to vote in April - seeing political participation as essential for change.

The Montenegrin authorities denied claims by Russian heavy metal star Sergey ‘Pauk’ Troitsky that he escaped from a prison near Podgorica where he was serving six months for arson.

Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic is attending a summit of Balkan leaders in Sarajevo after relations plunged over Bosnia’s failed challenge to an International Court of Justice verdict clearing Serbia of genocide.

A man arrested for shooting at veteran Kosovo politician, rights activists and lawyer Azem Vllasi accused his victim of oppressing young people when he was a Communist leader.

A new book distributed for free at newsstands accuses a number of activists, analysts, journalists and students of working for US billionaire philanthropist George Soros.

Announced plans for the large-scale refurbishment of the Serbian capital have been broadly welcomed - but questions about the cost and overall strategy linger.

In an escalation of the bitter row between the Netherlands and Turkey, Tayyip Recep Erdogan accused the Dutch of responsibility for the massacres of Bosniaks from Srebrenica in 1995.

The nostalgia for socialist Yugoslavia in some Balkan countries indicates dissatisfaction with present-day conditions, a historian who led research on the issue told BIRN.