Balkans

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.

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.

Croatia and Bosnia say the expulsion of hundreds of migrants and refugees from the first to the second country are regulated by a bilateral agreement – but NGOs, rights groups and a legal expert question its legality.
Since the end of March 2023, hundreds of migrants and refugees have been returned from Croatia back to Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The younger generation of politicians in Bosnia has brought about no positive change at all in the country’s confrontational politics – and won’t do in future.

Among the many follies generated by the NGO sector in Bosnia in the post-war period is that a new generation of politicians in Bosnia will bring change. This sounded both polite and hopeful. The narrative was that once the politicians of the 1990s exited the political scene, a new and a brighter beginning was assured.

In the Republic of Albania the next local elections are scheduled to take place on 14 May 2023. The last local elections, which were held on 30 June 2019, were boycotted by the opposition, while the turnout at the elections was only 21.6%. As a result, all positions in local self-governance authorities were occupied by the candidates of the Socialist Party (PS) headed by Edi Rama. The last local elections in Albania were conducted in an atmosphere of tensions, after the Albanian opposition had withdrawn from the work of the Parliament and organized political activities on the streets of Tirana at which it requested the resignation of Prime Minister Rama, establishment of an interim government and holding of general elections.