INSIDER
Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić says he isn't like ousted Syrian leader Bashar Assad and has no intention of fleeing the country despite spreading protests against his increasingly autocratic rule.
Scuffles and fistfights broke out between ruling party and opposition lawmakers in Serbia’s parliament on Monday over a deadly rail station roof collapse that has ignited tensions in the Balkan state.
Anti-government protesters in Serbia are demanding arrests and the resignations of top officials over the collapse of a railway station roof that killed 14 people in a northern city.
Protesters have thrown flares and red paint at the City Hall building in the Serbian city of Novi Sad in rage over last week’s collapse of a concrete canopy at the railway station that killed 14 people.
Hundreds of people lit candles and left flowers on Saturday to commemorate 14 people who were killed when a concrete canopy crashed at the entrance of a railway station in the northern Serbian city of Novi Sad.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has announced a $3 billion deal to buy 12 French warplanes, shifting his country away from its dependence on Russian arms.
Serbia’s president has accused demonstrators who oppose a lithium mining project in the Balkan country of being part of a Western-backed “hybrid” warfare against his government and vowed to take strong legal action against those protesters who have blocked railway and road traffic in the capital a day earlier.
Tens of thousands of protesters have rallied in downtown Belgrade against lithium mining in Serbia.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has praised a tentative deal between the European Union and Serbia that paves the way for the disputed excavation of lithium.
An attacker with a crossbow has wounded a Serbian police officer guarding the Israeli Embassy in Belgrade.
Serbia’s governing populists have declared victory at tense municipal elections in dozens of cities and towns throughout the Balkan country, including a rerun vote in the capital, Belgrade, as opposition are claiming major irregularities.
The United Nations has approved a resolution establishing an annual day to commemorate the 1995 genocide of more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslims by Bosnian Serbs.
China and European Union candidate Serbia have signed an agreement to build a “shared future” between the two states, making the Balkan country the first in Europe to agree on such a document with Beijing.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping will spend most of his five-day tour in Europe this week in two small countries at the continent’s eastern half.
France’s government has presented a bill to allow adults with terminal cancer or other end-of-life illness to take lethal medication.
Serbia has sent a protest note after the Croatian foreign minister called President Aleksandar Vučić a Russian “satellite” in the Balkans.
The United States has warned that ongoing celebrations of a Bosnian Serb self-proclaimed national holiday violate Bosnia’s constitution and a 1995 peace agreement.
Serbia's military wants to reintroduce obligatory military service as tensions continue to rise in the Balkans.
Serbian police say they have detained at least 38 people who took part in a protest against reported widespread irregularities during a recent general ballot that declared the governing populists winners of the parliamentary and local councils’ elections.
Police in Serbia have fired tear gas to prevent hundreds of opposition supporters from entering the capital’s city council building.
Serbia’s main opposition group has urged the European Union to help open an international investigation into reported irregularities during last weekend election which have caused political tensions in the troubled Balkan nation seeking EU membership.
Serbia’s ruling populists are insisting that weekend snap elections were free and fair, but international observers have noted multiple irregularities.
International monitors have said that Serbia’s tense weekend snap vote was held in “unjust conditions" and they urged the authorities to investigate reports of irregularities as opposition supporters took to the streets to protest.
Serbia’s governing populists have claimed a sweeping victory in the country’s parliamentary election, which have been marred by reports of major irregularities both during a tense campaign and on voting day.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic is pushing to reassert his populist party’s dominance in this weekend's parliamentary and local election in the troubled eastern European country following a turbulent year that has shaken the government’s popularity.
When Serbia began talks to join the European Union in 2014, pro-Western Serbs were hopeful the process would set their troubled country on an irreversible path to democratization.
Serbia’s intelligence chief has resigned after less than a year in the post saying he wanted to avoid possible further embargos against the Balkan nation.
Serbia’s president has denied reports of a military buildup along the border with Kosovo.
Serbia’s president has demanded that a NATO-led peacekeeping force in Kosovo take over for the national law enforcement agency in northern Kosovo.
Tensions between Serbia and Kosovo flared anew over the weekend when some 30 heavily armed Serbs barricaded themselves in an Orthodox monastery in northern Kosovo, setting off a daylong gunbattle with police that left one officer and three attackers dead.
Kosovo is observing a day of mourning for the Kosovar Albanian police officer killed by Serb gunmen who then barricaded themselves in an Orthodox monastery on Sunday.
At least 30 Serb gunmen have killed a Kosovar Albanian police officer then stormed an Orthodox monastery in Kosovo near its border with Serbia, setting off ongoing gunbattles that have left three assailants dead and raised tensions between the two former wartime foes as they seek to normalize ties.
The European Union is urging Serbia and Kosovo to respect an agreement meant to end tensions between them and set their relations on a more normal path.
The leaders of Serbia and Kosovo have failed again to make progress in talks meant to improve their testy ties.
Hundreds of Pride activists have gathered in the Serbian capital amid heavy police presence and anti-gay messages sent by the country’s conservative leadership and threats by far-right groups.
Senior lawmakers from the United States and Europe are calling for a change in the Western diplomatic approach toward Serbia and Kosovo.
The leaders of the Netherlands and Luxembourg say normalizing ties between Kosovo and Serbia would serve not only regional peace and stability but also their prospects of further integration into the European Union.
Serbia has reiterated a threat to intervene militarily in its former province of Kosovo if NATO-led peacekeepers there fail to protect minority Serbs from what Belgrade calls the terrorist threat of Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian authorities.
Tens of thousands of anti-government protesters have staged marches in Belgrade and other Serbian towns against Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic.
Tens of thousands of protesters formed a ring around Serbia’s government headquarters in downtown Belgrade on Friday, demanding the resignation of the country’s populist president, top security officials and the “liberation” of pro-state TV stations that they say promote violence, all in the wake of two mass shootings that stunned the nation.
Serbia’s president has promised an early parliamentary election in an apparent attempt to defuse large protests against his populist rule in the wake of two mass shootings that shook the nation.
Thousands of people have rallied for a fifth time in a month after two mass shootings in Serbia that shook the nation, even as the country’s populist president rejected any responsibility and ignored their demands to step down.
The leaders of France and Germany have urged new municipal elections in northern Kosovo in the hopes that another ballot will quell a flare-up of ethnic tensions that have led to violent protests in the region.
NATO will send 700 more troops to northern Kosovo to help quell violent protests after clashes with ethnic Serbs there left 30 international soldiers wounded.
The NATO-led KFOR peacekeeping force say that 25 of its troops were injured in the clashes with ethnic Serbs in northern Kosovo who were trying to take over the offices of one of the municipalities where ethnic Albanian mayors took up their posts last week.
Serbia has condemned NATO-led peacekeepers stationed in neighboring Kosovo for their alleged failure to stop “brutal actions” by Kosovo police against ethnic Serbs.
Tens of thousands of people rallied in Serbia on Friday for a third time in a month in protests following two mass shootings, even as government officials in the Balkan country rejected opposition criticism of the way they handled the crisis.
Authorities say dozens of Serbian schools have received bomb threats amid security concerns following two mass shootings early this month, including one in an elementary school.
Authorities in Serbia have displayed stacks of guns and cartons of hand grenades from the thousands of weapons they say people have handed over since back-to-back mass shootings stunned the Balkan nation.
Tens of thousands of people have marched through the Serbian capital, Belgrade, and blocked a key bridge in the second large protest since two mass shootings that rattled the Balkan country and left 17 people dead, including many children.
When a 13-year-old boy last week opened fire on his fellow students in a school in Belgrade, and a day later a man killed people at random in villages south of the Serbian capital, the country came to a standstill.
The United States’ top international development official, Samantha Power, has pledged U.S. support to Serbia and Kosovo as the two former wartime enemies work to stabilize relations at a time of heightened tensions.
The leaders of Serbia and Kosovo met in Brussels on Tuesday only to agree on joint work in finding the missing persons in their talks on the implementation of a European Union-backed plan to normalize ties between the former war foes.
The Serbian president has sharply criticized Western officials mediating talks on normalizing ties with Kosovo, calling them liars and fraudsters, and says the Serb minority in the former Serbian province won’t tolerate foreign “occupation.”.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell says the leaders of Serbia and Kosovo have tentatively agreed on how to implement a European Union-sponsored plan to normalize their relations after decades of tensions between the two Balkan wartime foes.
Serbia’s populist president has warned during a chaotic parliamentary session that the Balkan nation could become a European “pariah” state if it rejects a Western plan for normalizing relations with Kosovo.
Serbia's president says that his country would face a halt in European Union integration and economic and political isolation if it rejects a new Western plan for normalizing relations with Kosovo.
Serbia's president says NATO-led peacekeepers in Kosovo have rejected its demand for Serbian security forces be allowed to return to the breakaway province amid ongoing tensions.
Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic says Serbs will start removing their barricades in Kosovo on Thursday in a move that deescalates tensions that triggered fears of new clashes in the Balkans.
A former commander in the Kosovo Liberation Army has been found guilty of arbitrarily detaining and torturing prisoners perceived as supporters of Serbia during the country’s 1999 war of independence, and murdering one of them.
Serbia has formally demanded that its security troops return to the breakaway former Serbian province of Kosovo, despite warnings from the West that such calls are unlikely to be accepted and only add to tensions in that part of the Balkans.
Tensions between Serbia and Kosovo flared anew during the past week after Serbs erected barricades on the main roads in the north of the former Serbian province to protest the arrest of a former Kosovo Serb police officer.
EU leaders and their counterparts in the Western Balkans have worked to strengthen their partnership during a summit in Albania as Russia's war in Ukraine threatens to reshape the geopolitical balance in the region.
Austria, Hungary and Serbia have held another top-level meeting dedicated to curbing migration, including by sending more than 100 police officers, vehicles equipped with night vision cameras and drones to the border with North Macedonia.
Kosovo has accused neighboring Serbia of trying to destabilize the country through pressuring members of the ethnic Serb community to resign from their posts for not accepting Pristina’s decision to change illegal vehicle license plates.
The European Union and the U.S. have questioned Serbia’s commitment to join Europe’s 27-nation bloc after Belgrade signed an agreement with Moscow pledging long-term “consultations” on foreign policy matters amid the Russian aggression in Ukraine.
Hungary’s governing party says it wants to poll the country’s citizens on whether they support European Union sanctions imposed against Russia over its war in Ukraine.
Hungary's justice minister is urging her European Union partners to be “tolerant” after the EU’s executive branch recommended suspending billions of euros in funding to the country.
Organizers of European LGBTQ events held in Belgrade this week have said they will hold a planned Pride march on the streets of the Serbian capital Saturday despite a police ban and threats from anti-gay groups.
Serbia’s police have banned a Pride march planned amid pan-European LGBTQ events being held this week in Belgrade, citing a risk of clashes with far-right anti-gay activists.
Thousands of opponents of a pan-European LGBTQ event planned for this week in Belgrade marched through the Serbian capital on Sunday despite an announced ban of Europe’s largest annual gay gathering.
Opposition parties in Serbia and international rights groups have denounced a decision by populist President Aleksandar Vucic to cancel next month’s pan-European LGBTQ EuroPride events because of what he said were threats from right-wing extremists.
