Kosovo

  Bottom Line Up Front On January 17, Russian President Vladimir Putin received a warm welcome during an official state visit to Serbia. Serbia is seeking to join the EU, but its conflict with Kosovo is blocking its membership. Russia strongly supports Serbia and its Putin-esque leader, President Aleksandar Vucic. ...

  Bottom Line Up Front On December 14, Kosovo’s parliament voted to form an official standing army, prompting a volley of angry rhetoric from Serbia and Russia. The decision to transition the existing 3,000 personnel of the Kosovo Security Force (KSF) is backed by the U.S, and some segments of ...

Bosnia and Kosovo are two of the biggest exporters of jihadists joining the Islamic State (ISIS) and al-Nusra Front (al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria) from the Balkans. As The Cipher Brief reported last month, legacies of the Communist era and the wars of the 1990s – presence of foreign fighters, economic and ...

Those who use radical and extremist methods to achieve their political goals employ the most horrifying and inhumane ways to kill, terrorize, and punish people, and do so with a high level of resilience and transformative abilities. The skills and intimidation they utilize allow them to successfully recruit among communities ...

Every second year is an election year in Bosnia and Herzegovina. For this “heart shaped land” in the center of the forever-stigmatized Western Balkans, local and general elections have become the ideal stage for nationalist leaders to not only remind citizens of the dangers that permeate their country, but also ...