Balkans

With the EU slapping new sanctions on Minsk and claims the Belarusians are trying to force the migrants they are herding over the Polish border to provoke violent incidents, the plight of those stuck on the border promises to get worse before it gets better.

It’s almost midnight in a forest near the village of Narewka, located about 10 kilometres away from Poland’s eastern border with Belarus, and a family of Iraqi Kurds are squatting, holding their breath, as footsteps approach.

On the 30th anniversary of the fall of Vukovar to the Yugoslav People’s Army and Serbian paramilitaries, local residents and Croats who fought to defend the town look back on the devastating three-month siege and its brutal aftermath.

The Yugoslav People’s Army, aided by Serb Territorial Defence forces and paramilitaries from Serbia, launched a full-blown attack on Vukovar in eastern Croatia on August 25, 1991, beginning a siege that would last for 86 days and leave around 3,000 soldiers and civilians dead before the town’s defenders had to surrender.

Bosnia and Herzegovina is once again making headlines. There is talk of renewed violence, with the blessing of Belgrade and Moscow. But the entire region is in a precarious situation.

Back in September 2021, tensions ran high in Montenegro following the decision to anoint Bishop Joanikije II as the new Serbian Orthodox Metropolitan of Montenegro. Since Serbia heavily backs the Serbian Orthodox Church and utilises it to expand its soft power influence throughout the Balkans, its meddling in Montenegro did much to aggravate relations between ethnic Serbs and ethnic Montenegrins, who are a majority. There were explosions, teargas being fired by law enforcement agencies and barricades blocking roads.

A man convicted of terrorism in Belgium has been detained as he entered Bulgaria through its south-eastern border with Turkey, prosecutors announced on Thursday.

Border police and state security agents intercepted the man on Wednesday in a special operation, the prosecution said.

He is “sought in relation to a 20-year jail sentence for terrorism handed to him by a court in an EU country” and a terrorism sentence of nine years and five months in Turkey, it said.

What is behind the current crisis in Bosnia?

Bosnia and Herzegovina (commonly referred to as Bosnia) is facing a dual challenge that threatens to undo the agreement that ended a war between Serbs, Croats and Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks). The war was marked by the worst atrocities on European soil since World War II, with more than 100,000 people killed and more than two million displaced. By way of talks in Dayton, Ohio, the U.S. brokered peace agreements that brought the fighting to a close and established a Bosnian state composed of two self-governing regions: the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Republika Srpska. Republika Srpska is divided into eastern and western halves, which are joined at the centre by the Brčko autonomous region.

In November 2001, the Serbian State Security Service’s Special Operations Unit staged a mutiny and set up roadblocks. The failure to punish the instigators of the armed revolt would have deadly consequences for the country’s prime minister.

“The commander ordered that the Communication Centre will no longer receive calls,” said a note entered at 5.10pm on November 9, 2001 in the daily log of the Communication Centre in Kula, the headquarters of Serbia’s State Security Special Operations Unit, the JSO.

The sudden death of Bosniak strongman Muamer Zukorlic has shocked the mainly Muslim region, which straddles Serbia and Montenegro, and where he left a unique mark.

One of the largest crowds that the town of Novi Pazar in southwest Serbia has ever seen gathered on Sunday to say farewell to Bosniak leader Muamer Zukorlic.

The Hungarian premier’s weekend meeting with Bosnian Serb political leader Milorad Dodik has triggered speculation about possible private business deals or secret negotiations about the fate of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Viktor Orban’s meeting with the Serb member of Bosnia’s tripartite presidency, Milorad Dodik, on Saturday has continued to puzzle experts and trigger speculation among Hungarian and Bosnian officials about the motives for the Hungarian Prime Minister’s visit to the Balkan country.

A change in government in Hungary could spell the end of a comfortable exile for North Macedonia’s fugitive ex-prime minister, but extraditing Nikola Gruevski would take more than political will alone.

Afugitive from justice in his home country of North Macedonia, and a political asylum seeker in Hungary under the protection of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban: for the past three years, that’s been the life of former authoritarian prime minister Nikola Gruevski, who fled a jail sentence in North Macedonia in 2018.