On the cold night of January 6, dozens of families in Kosovo were forced to abandon their lives and homes due to flooding and nationwide reflection should have been profound. Fortunately, there have been no casualties by the time of publication, but images from that night show that the danger was real. Expensive camera equipment…
Nowadays, whenever the Kremlin is not firing rockets, it is uploading falsehoods online, transforming the battle for the Balkans into a battle of bits and bytes. The sprawling propaganda ecosystem dubbed Project Pravda, also known as “Portal Kombat” and Operation Doppelgänger, are deliberate tools of Russia’s hybrid warfare, producing millions of questionable news articles. The…
When the leaders of the Western Balkans met on October 6 in Albania’s coastal town of Durrës for this year’s Brdo-Brijuni summit, their message sounded familiar: cooperation and the “European perspective.” After a decade of summits and communiqués, the question persists—can these frameworks honestly advance the region towards integration, or have they become more elaborate…
When two of my students, Kanita and Fjolla, returned to Kosovo from their Erasmus+ exchange semester at the Häme University of Applied Sciences, HAMK, in Finland, they spoke of how this experience had fundamentally changed them. “Finland taught me the beauty of silence, the strength in independence, and how to appreciate the simple things. I…
More than two months after February’s parliamentary elections, Kosovo is trapped in an institutional crisis as parties cannot find a solution to unblock the election of parliament’s speaker. The constitutive session of the Kosovo Parliament, which opened on April 15, 2025, has now been interrupted for the seventh time, reminiscent of political deadlocks from 2014…
The EU-facilitated verbal deal to implement the ‘normalisation’ of relations between Serbia and Kosovo, reached in Ohrid, North Macedonia in 2023, continues to hang in the balance as the Kosovo-Serbia dialogue remains nearly paralysed. Kosovo’s Prime Minister Albin Kurti and Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic have been rarely seen together since a roadmap to implement a…
NATO General Secretary Mark Rutte emphasised the need for leadership and commitment from all parties to secure lasting peace and stability in the Balkans during his visit to Kosovo. Speaking at a press conference with Kosovo President Vjosa Osmani on Tuesday, NATO General Secretary Mark Rutte underscored that dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia remains the…
The President of Slovenia, Natasa Pirc Musar, told BIRN in an interview that her predecessor as president, Borut Pahor, is the right candidate to replace the outgoing EU special envoy for Kosovo-Serbia dialogue, Miroslav Lajcak. “I am supporting him,” Pirc Musar said, adding that her country has often mistakenly not supported Slovenians for high positions…
Embarking on a mission to digitize public services by 2030 is imperative for Kosovo to align with global standards, yet serious challenges lie ahead. Kosovo aspires to shift the majority of its public services online by 2030, leveraging advanced digital infrastructure. The newly approved strategy for the digital agenda, endorsed by the country’s government, seeks…
Critical infrastructure resilience is vital for nations. Given the essential role of energy in all aspects of society, the energy system’s resilience is essential. But where does the Government of Kosovo stand in developing a resilient critical energy infrastructure in light of global threats and risks that are not easily forecasted? Our society is a…