Nadia and the Securitate, by Romanian historian Stejarel Olaru, is a meticulous and ballyhoo-free reconstruction of the ordeal the teenager experienced at home while awards and accolades poured in ...

In Serbia, 2025 was the year when protesting students rejected collaboration with the country’s civil society NGOs - but at what cost? Twenty-one-year-old Jovana Pongracic is a third-year student of ...

In giving a clear victory to Albin Kurti’s Vetevendosje, Kosovo’s voters delivered a strong message – the months-long political stalemate must end so the country can move forward. As the dust settles ...

Between 2023 and 2024, the value of Serbian arms sales to Israel soared from 1.4 million euros to 42.3 million, unaffected by widespread allegations of Israeli war crimes in Gaza. Serbian arms exports ...

People across Serbia have lost their jobs after supporting student-led protests against the ruling Serbian Progressive Party, or for refusing to attend government-backed counter-rallies. For 16 years, ...

From mass protests and fragile peace talks to pressure on opposition parties and the jailing of journalists, Turkey had another politically troubled year. Riot police use teargas to disperse ...

BIRN investigations have uncovered how journalists conducting public-interest investigations in Romania were put under surveillance by their targets with the help of law enforcement. “Do you see that ...

Armed drones are becoming a favoured means for Balkan countries to boost their military muscle and regional clout – but even though they are unlikely to trigger a war, their unchecked spread brings ...

The recently-passed Western Balkans Democracy and Prosperity Act shows that some US lawmakers still care about the region. But it doesn’t mean that Donald Trump is going to tell Aleksandar Vucic to be ...

Croatia is still searching for 1,740 victims of the 1991-95 war, many of them from the wartime flashpoint town of Vukovar, where the funeral this year of one of the town's defenders drew thousands of ...

Companies in Bosnia are developing drones that could potentially be used by the country’s military, BIRN can reveal, even as Sarajevo buys six discounted Bayraktar drones from Turkey. In early July, ...

In the first of a four-part series examining the legacy of independent Croatia’s first president, who died 25 years ago, BIRN looks at how Franjo Tudjman built a personality cult and extended his ...