I still recall the first time I saw a defendant accused of crimes against humanity admit guilt in court. It was 2008. I had been a journalist for a few years and had covered trials at the UN-backed International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the Hague and at the Bosnian War Crimes Chamber. But this was different.
A dispute about engraving civilians’ names on a monument to deceased fighters in a small Kosovo town highlighted a wider problem: although most people killed in the 1998-99 war were civilians, most war memorials commemorate guerrillas.
New report from Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime says the Western Balkans has become a key gateway for Russian cash to flow illicitly across borders thanks to the weak rule of law and high presence of orgnised crime there.
Landslide victory of anti-Đukanović block
Early parliamentary elections in Montenegro were held on 11 June 2023. However, the official election results were publicized only on 14 July 2023.
The parties that won the largest number of votes from the voters for the Parliament of Montenegro, which has 81 representatives, include the Europe Now Movement /Pokret Evropa sad/ which won 25.53% of votes (24 representatives), the Together Coalition /Zajedno/ (DPS, SD, LP, DUA) 23.22% (21 representatives), the For the Future of Montenegro coalition /Za budućnost Crne Gore/ (NSD, DNP, RP) 14.74% (13 representatives), the Bravery Counts coalition /Hrabro se broji/ (Democrats and URA) 12.48% (11 representatives), Bosniak Party 7.08% (6 representatives), Albanian Forum 1.91% (2 representatives), the For You coalition /Za tebe/ (SNP and Demos) 3.13% (2 representatives), the Croat minority list On the Right Side of the World /Na pravoj strani svijeta –HGI/ 0.74% (1 representative) and the Albanian minority Albanian Alliance coalition /Albanska alijansa/ 1.49% (1 representative).
On June 14, a fishing vessel carrying hundreds of refugees, the Adriana, sank off the Greek port city of Pylos. Roughly 600 people, including children, drowned. An investigation by German regional broadcaster NDR, the Guardian, the research agency Forensis and the Greek organization Solomon has now come to the clear conclusion that the Adriana was towed by the Greek coast guard towards Italian waters and then, when this was unsuccessful, capsized.
World War I wasn’t just a conflict between nations—it was a war between empires. Western European empires like Great Britain and France had overseas colonies around the world, while eastern empires like Austria-Hungary and Russia ruled European and North Asian territories connected by land. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on July 28, 1914, was itself an anti-imperialist murder, planned by members of Young Bosnia angry over Austria-Hungary’s annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Violence flared in northern Kosovo last week between ethnic Serbs and NATO’s peacekeeping mission, KFOR. The clashes left NATO troops injured, Serbia emboldened, Kosovo weakened, Russia empowered, and the transatlantic community divided.
As ethnic trouble brewed and the latest confrontations erupted this week in northern Kosovo, a powerful symbol of Russian expansionism emerged alongside the Serbian flags denoting resistance to Pristina’s authority.
RFE/RL’s Balkan Service and other media shared images of the “Z,” which was used by Russian forces invading Ukraine, painted or otherwise scrawled on Kosovo police and NATO peacekeepers’ vehicles.
Croatia says that a big jump in migrants and refugees being returned to Bosnia is thanks to Sarajevo finally implementing a bilateral ‘readmissions’ deal. Data from Bosnia suggests otherwise.
Croatia has been sending migrants and refugees back to Bosnia and Herzegovina since 2017 on the basis of a bilateral agreement between the ex-Yugoslav republics, data from Bosnia suggests, contradicting a claim by Croatia that its neighbour only began implementing the deal this year.
A leaked proposal by Hungary’s MVM Group that would see Serbia cede much of its hydropower resources has been seized on by the Serbian opposition and energy experts as another damaging consequence of the close ties between the countries’ leaders.