From politics to the media business, high expectations often go hand-in-hand with disappointments big and small, as our selection of Balkan Insight Premium stories this week shows.

A court in North Macedonia issued life sentences to four defendants for the killing of a teenage girl and a retired barber who were kidnapped in an attempt to secure a ransom in 2023.

Serbia sent record amounts of arms to Israel last year. But President Aleksandar Vucic said that since Israel attacked Iran, such exports have been stopped.

Firefighters and volunteers have been battling to contain wildfires that have broken out in the last 24 hours on the Greek islands of Chios and Crete.

Our selection of Premium stories this week takes a look at the region’s slow-burning political crises, smuggling networks, digital surveillance and a whole lot more.

Ilie Bolojan is entrsuted with forming a stable government that can address Romania’s severe budget deficit amid deep divisions over fiscal policy.

Amid rising far-right sentiment, Romanian authorities are tightening laws against extremist propaganda, leading to complaints of censorship.

As authorities mull whether to renovate or sell a once famous children’s mountain resort – now fallin into ruin – investors lie in wait.

Months of reports published by Balkan Insight about the student-led protest movement in Serbia have been compiled into a new e-book for free download.

Download this e-book collection of Balkan Insight’s reports telling the story of the mass protest movement in Serbia from November 2024 to May 2025.

A move to turn the site of the former Spac labour camp in northern Albania into a film set has revived calls for better protection of what’s left of Albania’s dark communist past.

The Republika Srpska government says a deal with China’s ELINC is purely about protecting data, but a lack of transparency and limited means of oversight has critics worried about the potential ...