“Splavs”, ramshackle floating nightclubs, line the Danube as it winds through Serbian capital Belgrade. Many churn out bland, indistinguishable house remixes of chart hits. Some still purvey souped-up nationalist hits known as “turbofolk”, popularised during the wars which engulfed the …
China is not the answer to Nato
The timing of President Xi Jinping’s visit to Belgrade yesterday was far from accidental: exactly 25 years before, Nato forces bombed the city’s Chinese embassy during Operation Allied Force, the two-and-half month campaign against what was then the Federal Republic …
The European village colonised by China
A tiny hay-cart blocks the path to a vast Chinese-owned copper mine. From it hangs a hand-painted sign that reads “life before profits”, a message for Serbia Zijin Mining, the subsidiary of a Chinese conglomerate, which is seeking to build …
Inside Liberland: Europe’s Bitcoin micronation
Chugging down the Danube in a fisherman’s boat, past the unrecognised exclave known as Liberland, it’s hard to reconcile fantasy with reality. This patch of land — lushly forested, mosquito-ridden and boggy — remains unclaimed by neighbouring Croatia and Serbia, …
Will the US learn from Serbia’s mass shootings?
With the glaring exception of the United States, a mass shooting normally sparks a national crisis — one that begins with some desperate, top-down soul-searching before an immediate clampdown on gun ownership. In Canada in 1989, Australia and the UK …
Is Serbia a pro-Putin outpost?
A recent BBC documentary promises to take the British viewer “inside” Serbia, exposing the country’s support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The language is heightened, evoking Cold War ghosts. “There’s something strange happening in Serbia,” the presenter mutters in …
Will Kosovo’s war ever end?
North Mitrovica, Kosovo
There is a strict timetable to crises in Kosovo. It runs like this. First, after a disagreement between Serbia’s leader and Kosovo’s, a deadline is set by the Kosovo side to do this or that, or barricades …
Putin is following the Bosnia playbook
The Russian invasion of Ukraine is widely seen as drawing the curtain on the era of Western domination that defined the Nineties. Yet the End of History was not a peaceful time: the conflict now raging in Eastern Europe was …
Protests in Serbia send clear warning to President Vucic
undefined
Source: Protests in Serbia send clear warning to President Vucic…