Central & Eastern Europe Archive

There is a new landmark in Moscow, opposite the towering ramparts of the Kremlin’s Borovitskaya Gate. That imposing fortified passage, through which presidential motorcades traditionally enter and exit, now shares its position on the Kremlin’s southern flank with an enormous statue of Vladimir, which was unveiled late last year. This Vladimir is not Putin, but the sainted Grand Prince Vladimir of Kiev, whose baptism signaled the conversion of the Rus’ to Orthodox Christianity in the 10th century, and the alignment of their vast Eastern European empire with Constantinople and the heirs of Rome. Notably, the baptism of Vladimir—the first step […]

Leaders from Serbia and Kosovo held a new round of talks in Brussels last week in a bid to defuse tensions that have been on the rise recently. The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, said she was “encouraged by the constructive engagement from both sides.” Leaders from Serbia and Kosovo declined to comment. In an email interview, Naim Rashiti, the executive director of the Balkans Policy Research Group, discusses the state of relations between Serbia and Kosovo. WPR: What is behind the recent spike in tensions between Serbia and Kosovo? Naim Rashiti: Last month a train traveled between […]

Fears of another war are growing in Bosnia and Herzegovina as xenophobia and nationalist rivalries surge in the largely autonomous and Serb-dominated entity of Republika Srpska. Observers are warning that a growing separatist movement in the territory threatens the terms of the Dayton Accords that ended the Bosnian War of the 1990s. That conflict killed more than 100,000 people and displaced some 1 million civilians through interethnic violence between Catholic Croats, Bosnian Muslims—or Bosniaks—and Orthodox Christian Serbs. Republika Srpska, the majority-Serb enclave of Bosnia and Herzegovina that was formalized by the U.S.-brokered Dayton Accords, virtually cleansed the bulk of its […]