Balkans

Evidence obtained from a crackdown on the Sky ECC encrypted messaging app has shed more light on the support that crime gangs enjoy from public officials in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina has confirmed that evidence obtained from the crackdown of an encrypted messaging app will be valid in court, announcing the first indictments by the end of November for some of more than a 100 people arrested in the past year-and-a-half.

Concerns are growing over the government’s handling of a programme to move Ukrainian refugees from hotels to state-owned facilities, undermining their integration into Bulgarian society.

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in late February, Bulgarians have been pressing their authorities to do more for the tens of thousands of refugees who have sought shelter in the Black Sea country. Now they face a new challenge.

If the political class doesn’t get to grips with the mass exodus of the young, and give them more opportunities, they risk ending up with no one to rule over.

Ivisited my maternal birthplace of Prusac near the central Bosnian town of Donji Vakuf twice last summer. Once a vibrant community, what was striking about it in August was its sheer emptiness. I encountered a few elderly people, but no youngsters.

After Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev visited Albania on Tuesday in the first-ever visit of its kind, Albanian President Bajram Begaj declared the welcoming of Azeri investments and the possible establishment of diplomatic missions.

Kosovo’s Prime Minister Albin Kurti doubled down on the decision not to allow the creation of an Association of Serb Municipalities, noting it is unconstitutional and not wanted by the local population, rather only from Belgrade.

In a sign of resistance to Western calls to choose between Moscow and the West, Serbian President Aleksander Vucic said his country’s brotherly relations with Russia cannot be destroyed, and Belgrade would never succumb to pressure during a meeting with Turko Daudov, an advisor to controversial Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov.

South-East Europe, and especially the Balkan Peninsula as the main part of it, have traditionally been the object of numerous geopolitical, geostrategic, and publicist analyses, as well as the subject of debates among the Balkan, European, and global experts in international relations. The new Iron Curtain or the Cold War 2.0 between western and eastern Europe was not the end of the Balkan’s importance for the US administration and NATO as well.

Bulgarian lawmakers have voted to approve the purchase of eight F-16C/D Block 70 fighter jets for the country’s Air Force. The forthcoming acquisition is to be worth close to $1.3 billion.

On Thursday, the prime ministers of the six Western Balkan countries convened in Berlin to sign three important agreements—on mutual recognition of ID cards, university diplomas, and professional qualifications—as part of a revitalized “Berlin Process.” The signing is a meaningful step in rebuilding momentum for regional economic cooperation and integration, and it is a signal that European Union (EU) countries are once again focusing on the Balkans in the shadow of Russia’s ruinous invasion of Ukraine. That attention is paying dividends. And it couldn’t come at a more important time.