Before Vladimir Putin’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine spawned the largest war in Europe since World War II, that grim distinction belonged to a conflict that accompanied the collapse of Yugoslavia in the 1990s—the fighting to carve up or hold onto Bosnia-Herzegovina by Eastern Orthodox Serbs, Catholic Croatians, and Muslim Bosniaks. In Bosnia, less than fifty years after the horror of the Nazi “final solution,” genocide returned to Europe.
Huge crowds took to the streets of the capital Sofia and other major cities on Monday night to protest against the governing coalition of centre-right populists GERB, the pro-Russia Bulgarian Socialist Party and nationalist party There’s Such a People, backed by tycoon Delyan Peevski’s New Beginning.
The protests were some of the biggest for years, possibly since the 1990s, participants claimed. Sofia mayor Vassil Terziev described the demonstration in the capital as “the most well-attended in the last decade”.
The expanding use of surveillance in Kosovo comes with weak oversight and growing privacy risks; stronger institutions and greater public awareness are required to strike the right balance between safety and freedom.
In mid-2025, Kosovo’s Information and Privacy Agency, IPA, used its new monitoring platform to scan the country’s digital infrastructure for exposed devices.
Shipping containers sent by Noboa Trading Co. have been caught up in huge drug shipments sent from Ecuador to the Balkans. Among those handling this cocaine when it reached Europe was a drug trafficking group allegedly led by convicted drug lord Darko Šarić.
This month marks the 30th anniversary of the signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement, the US-brokered framework that ended the brutal 1992–95 Bosnian war, halted genocide, and placed Bosnia and Herzegovina on the path to peace.
Much of the world remembers Dayton as a diplomatic achievement that stopped the bloodshed. Yet its enduring significance lies in something more ambitious and noteworthy: it created the framework through which Bosnia’s people could rebuild, reform, and reconnect with the world.
Since Hamas launched its deadly attack on Israeli territory on October 7, 2023, and them Israel responded by waging war in Gaza, the number of terror attacks in the West has increased, according to the Global Terrorism Index compiled by the Institute for Economics and Peace.
The Kosovo Specialist Chamber is expected to rule on the case of Hashim Thaçi and his three co-defendants in the spring or early summer of 2026: the sentence of this controversial trial could potentially have strong repercussions in Kosovo and beyond
Turkey was among the first to recognise Kosovo in 2008 and has since backed its efforts for wider international recognition. During the early 2010s, frequent visits between then prime minister Hashim Thaci and Erdogan deepened ties, while Turkish companies secured major stakes in Kosovo’s economy: from the airport and electricity distribution to a significant share of the banking sector.
Prosecutors in Kosovo have shelved an investigation based on an internal audit at the Kosovo intelligence agency that identified nearly two million euros of alleged undocumented spending under three former directors, BIRN has found.
An internal audit at Kosovo’s state intelligence agency, AKI, identified undocumented spending of some two million euros from a ‘special operations fund’ under three former directors between 2017 and 2020, but prosecutors closed their investigation citing the statute of limitations and a lack of evidence, BIRN can reveal.
Economic structures from decades past continue to shape Kosovo’s economy.
From today’s perspective, living in Kosovo in the 1990s can be best captured by reversing Charles Dickens’ monumental opening in “A Tale of Two Cities”: “it was the worst of times, it was the best of times.” Within just a decade, we went from losing the best we were given in Yugoslavia — autonomy; to gaining the least any nation deserves — freedom; and eventually, independence.