Free Republic

Anti-government protesters in their thousands took to the streets of Belgrade on Saturday night for the tenth weekly demonstration of its kind. The protesters are a mix of citizens movements, opposition parties, from both left and right, academics, students and ordinary people. They are united in the belief that Serbia with president Aleksandar Vucic at the helm is sliding towards autocratic rule and that the country is gripped by political violence and a climate of fear. After more than two months of weekly protests people are still coming out in huge numbers and many political analysts believe the protests are...

The trial of Visnja Acimovic, who is accused of involvement in the shooting of 37 Bosniak men at Mracni Dol near the Susica detention camp in the Bosnian municipality of Vlasenica in June 1992, opened at Belgrade Higher Court on Monday. Acimovic told the court that she was not guilty. She said that from the end of May 1992 until the beginning of July that year, she and her family were staying in Backa Topola in Serbia.

On this date (by the Julian calendar then in use) in 1389, Stefan Lazar Hrebeljanovic — that’s Tsar Lazar to you — led the armies of Moravian Serbia against the expanding Ottoman Empire at the Battle of Kosovo. The Serbs were defeated — thereby plunging, in the national mythology, into a half-millennium of Turkish domination. Lazar was supposedly* captured and beheaded. For a generation, Lazar had firmed up his authority as the most significant Serbian autocrat outside the Ottoman orbit. The gravity of that orbit, however, grew more powerful with each passing year; soon, it would devour Byzantium

The Air Force Times' Sean Naylor scored an interview with Major General Mike Flynn, director of intelligence for General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan. There isn't a lot new here to longtime readers of The Long War Journal and Threat Matrix. Flynn gives an overview of the Taliban groups, notes that al Qaeda operatives serve as combat enablers for the Taliban, estimates Taliban forces in Afghanistan at between 19,000 to 27,000 fighters, and said Pakistan remains a major haven for the Taliban and al Qaeda. Of particular interest are Flynn's comments on Iran and the role...

Although temperatures in the Balkans are rising, neither budding flowers nor mass protests should be mistaken for the beginning of a Balkan Spring modeled on the revolutions that rocked the Arab world in 2011. The protesters’ main problem is that they’re unable to apply any political pressure on the government by rallying around a candidate that might threaten Vucic’s stranglehold on national politics. The entirety of the anti-Vucic ideological spectrum is represented—from student Marxists to Bosko Obradovic, the ultranationalist leader of Dveri, a far-right opposition party of religious conservatives—sometimes causing scuffles among the protesters. This highlights the fragmented and impotent...

BELGRADE – Weekly protest walks, taking place since 8 December 2018, have become the most serious challenge to the rule of Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic so far. The protests, which are supported but not formally organised by the opposition parties, have spread to more than 20 cities and towns across the country... One of the protests took place in Kosovska Mitrovica, the largest city of the Serb-majority Northern Kosovo, which is governed by Vucic’s political allies. The protests, organised under the title “One of the five million” (a reference to the initial reaction of President Vucic, in which he said...

Macedonian Prime Minister Zoran Zaev says the entire Balkans will have prosperity and lasting peace when Macedonia joins NATO. Zaev spoke in Sofia, Bulgaria Monday — two days before Macedonia signs the accession protocol at NATO headquarters in Brussels. "Macedonia has been waiting for 27 years to become a member of NATO. Zaev said. "Today, Macedonia has the hope of having open doors." Greece had blocked Macedonia's efforts to join NATO and the EU because of a long-running dispute over the use of the name 'Macedonia' — shared both by a historic region of northern Greece and the former Yugoslav...

The road to the Red Cross Concentration Camp is caked in frozen mud etched with tire tracks and cracking puddles. A dog jogs ahead to dig holes in the camp’s yard. The barbed-wire fence lies in a decrepit heap next to the ticket office branded with a faded swastika and, in thick capital letters, “WACHE SS”.Also, there’s also a high school next door.“Many tourists ask, ‘Oh, is this also part of the camp?’ No, it’s just a school,” explains our guide, Aleksandra Zdravkovic. She works at the tourism office of Nis, a quiet city of 190,000 in southern Serbia, and...

The Trump administration is working to score what it hopes to be another foreign policy win, this time by encouraging leaders from Serbia and Kosovo to sign a peace agreement in a ceremony that could take place at the White House. Trump recently sent letters to both Thaci and Serb President Aleksandar Vucic, asking they accelerate negotiations in an effort to resolve their impasse. As first reported in the Washington Post, Thaci and Vucic published their versions of the Trump letter online. “Failure to capi­tal­ize on this unique opportunity would be a tragic setback, as another chance for a comprehensive...

By April 1992, with its Soviet ally freshly dissolved, Yugoslavia as the world had known it was gone in a bloody and violent breakup, leaving some 100,000 dead, 2.4 million refugees, 2 million internally displaced, and seven independent nations in its place. While those ethnic tensions still simmer in much of the former Yugoslavia, so too is a growing sentimental recollection of life in a country much of the younger generations can only learn about in history books and museums like Milakovic’s Yugodom. A Gallup poll from last year showed that many people in the former Yugoslavia look back fondly...

Broadway legend Carole Cook implied she wants to see President Trump get assassinated, asking “Where's John Wilkes Booth when you need him?" when approached by a TMZ cameraman in Los Angeles on Sunday night. The 94-year-old Cook’s comment delighted her husband, who quickly reminded viewers that John Wilkes Booth killed a president, who was obviously Abraham Lincoln.

Four Russian diplomats will be banned from Greece after evidence revealed Russia was trying to foment opposition to a historic deal between Greece and Macedonia that is likely to pave the way for Macedonia’s Nato membership and so weaken Russian influence in the western Balkans. Russia, involved in a wider struggle for influence with the EU across the region, has already been accused of backing a failed coup in Montenegro in 2016. Russia said it would respond to the Greek expulsions by taking similar steps against Greek diplomats in Moscow. The expulsion of the diplomats, revealed in the Greek media...

Austrian troops will carry out exercises preparing the nation’s border defence against a migration influx later this month after Balkans police warned 80,000 third-world migrants are heading towards Western Europe. With up to 1,000 police officers, soldiers, and riot police set to take part in June, the drill will be Austria’s largest ever border patrol exercise, according to Kronen Zeitung, Austria’s best-selling newspaper. The announcement came following a security conference in Slovenia at which police chiefs from countries along the Balkans migration routes warned they had seen a significant upsurge in the number of border crossings. Speaking after the conference,...

Samantha Power delivers ominous message to Trump: 'Not a good idea to piss off John Brennan' Samantha Power, who was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under former President Barack Obama, warned President Trump on Saturday that it was "not a good idea to piss off John Brennan" after the former CIA director told him in a tweet that America would "triumph over you." MOTE AT LINK:

After letting 13 Eastern and central European states join the European Union roughly a decade ago, it seemed Brussels had grown tired of enlargement. The prospect of adding western Balkan nations to the bloc were put on the back burner. But now the European Commission has announced ambitious plans for a grand, new push toward enlargement, hoping to welcome western Balkan states in the EU within the next seven years. The bloc’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, called the news a turning point for Europe’s future. “The next months will be not only intense but also crucial to make sure...

A Bosnian-Croat war chief has died after downing poison during his war crimes trial at The Hague, Croatian state TV reports. Slobodan Praljak yelled, 'I am not a war criminal!' and drank a dark liquid from a small bottle seconds after losing his appeal against a 20-year prison sentence at the International Criminal Tribunal, in the Netherlands. 'I just drank poison,' he added. 'I am not a war criminal. I oppose this conviction.' Praljak, 72, is one of six Croatian politicians sentenced to jail for their involvement in a campaign to drive Muslims out of a would-be Bosnian Croat mini-state...

ON the morning of Saturday, Feb. 26, a day before the Academy Awards, the actress Carrie Fisher woke up in her Beverly Hills home next to the lifeless body of a gay Republican political operative named R. Gregory Stevens. Thus ended one of the more improbable friendships that Hollywood and Washington have known - and a globe-trotting, adventurous, but ultimately debilitating existence that might be fodder for a Tinseltown thriller, if it only had a satisfying resolution. Before its abrupt end, Mr. Stevens's journey had taken him from the beaches of San Clemente, Calif., and the slopes of Sun Valley,...

Despite its own many problems, Europe should remain committed to the western Balkans amid renewed tensions stemming from the wars of the 1990s, Germany’s president said Saturday. Frank-Walter Steinmeier spoke in Slovenia after a European Union-backed meeting of Balkan leaders designed to boost cooperation in the troubled region. A joint statement called for further EU integration, strengthening of dialogue and refraining from “nationalistic and inflammatory rhetoric.” Steinmeier said in comments translated into English that “the discussion today has shown that the past has not been fully overcome.” He also warned that “what happens in this region and also what doesn’t...

Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker warned US Vice President Mike Pence of another war in the Western Balkans if the EU collapses, including as a result of Donald Trump encouraging member states to leave after Brexit. Mike Pence was in Brussels on 20 February, but details of what was discussed were only disclosed by Juncker, who spoke to the Financial Times in an exclusive interview published today (24 March). “I told the vice-president, ‘Do not say that. Do not invite others to leave, because if the European Union collapses, you will have a new war in the Western Balkans’,” Juncker said....

A prominent watchdog on U.S. government has issued a report outlining how the feds have colluded with left-wing, billionaire activist George Soros to use taxpayer money to “destabilize” the democratic government of the Balkan nation of Macedonia, north of Greece.