—❗️🇮🇱/🇷🇸 (🇧🇦) NEW: Relations between Israel and the Republic of Srpska are expanding as Israeli company Aktiv Israel prepares to move production from Turkey to Srpska.

➡️ Milorad Dodik, leader of Srpska’s ruling party, will travel to Israel on 25 January and is expected to meet the country’s president during the visit.

✅ @balkanspectator — the leading Balkan news channel in English

—🪖🇧🇦 NEW: Bosnia revoked the drone production license of BNT – Tvornica mašina i hidraulike in Novi Travnik, after inspections found discrepancies between declared and actual drone parameters, continued production after the permit expired, and failures to submit subcontractor agreements within the legal deadline.

Defence Minister said he hopes the decision will be reviewed through legal procedures so that production can resume soon, only days after he publicly claimed Bosnia had developed a domestic drone “better than Bayraktars” ahead of its planned unveiling at the EDEX arms fair in Cairo.

🔗 Dunav Intel

✅ @balkanspectator — the leading Balkan news channel in English

—🇦🇱/🇬🇷/🇲🇪 WATCH: Albanian PM Edi Rama joked about Greeks and Montenegro during a panel discussion in the UAE.

"As a Greek ... you always underestimate people because you believe you have a monopoly on philosophy and are the direct heirs of Plato and Aristotle, but you are not."

"Montenegro is the greatest and biggest country in the region. They gave 50 million citizens. We are small, but Montenegro is the one."

🔗 kos_data

✅ @balkanspectator — the leading Balkan news channel in English

—🇷🇸 (🇧🇦) /🇮🇱 NEW: Milorad Dodik sharply condemned “wanted” posters targeting Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu in Sarajevo, calling them an act of political and religious hatred.

✅ @balkanspectator — the leading Balkan news channel in English

—We received this comment from a subscriber about the geopolitical importance of Kosovo:

The only importance Kosovo has is to America's power projections into the Balkans. There's a reason one of the biggest military bases in Europe, Camp Bondsteel, is located in Kosovo. Nobody else cares about it which is why it remains an irrelevant backwater.

Do you agree with him?

✅ @balkanspectator — the leading Balkan news channel in English

—❗️UPDATE: Croatia’s Defence Ministry issued a lengthy statement rejecting President Zoran Milanović’s criticism of the Rafale fighter jet deal, stressing that “Croatia and Serbia are not and cannot be in the same category” and that the aircraft were bought as a NATO and EU member via a G2G agreement with France to protect Croatian airspace and meet alliance obligations.

➡️ The ministry underlined that Croatian Rafales are integrated into NATO systems such as IFF and Link 16 with access to the full weapons suite, framed the F3-R to F4 upgrade as routine lifecycle modernisation, defended broader rearmament including HIMARS, CAESAR, Leopard 2A8, Bayraktar drones and new corvettes, and accused Milanović of having cut the defence budget and soldiers’ benefits when he was prime minister while now “systematically” undermining the army and its alliances.

✅ @balkanspectator — the leading Balkan news channel in English

—🛢🇭🇺/🇷🇸 UPDATE: Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said in Belgrade that energy company MOL is interested in acquiring a majority stake in the Oil Industry of Serbia (NIS), stressing that while details are up to MOL, the company is clearly aiming for majority ownership.

✅ @balkanspectator — the leading Balkan news channel in English

#BREAKING | 🇷🇺 🇲🇩 — Russia calls on its citizens to avoid traveling to Moldova citing "harassment" and "discrimination," per MFA.

The Global Eye | Subscribe

—❗️🇧🇬 NEW: Bulgaria is officially going to have early elections after the third mandate given by the president was turned down by the Ahmed Dugan's party, according to our source in the country.

➡️ This is the 8th election in 5 years.

✅ @balkanspectator — the leading Balkan news channel in English

—🇧🇬 NEW: In Ihtiman, Sofia Region an INCASO (Armoured Car) was assaulted by two armed robbers who stole 80.000 euros, they ran without any kind of transportation.

➡️ During that time one of the guards of the armoured car got free and called the police.

➡️ The police got the robbers while still running on the street near the train station, according to our source in Bulgaria.

✅ @balkanspectator — the leading Balkan news channel in English

—🇧🇬❌🇲🇰 NEW: A poll in Bulgaria shows only 34.2% of respondents support North Macedonia’s accession to the European Union, while 46.2% are opposed.

✅ @balkanspectator — the leading Balkan news channel in English

—🇷🇸/🇻🇪 WATCH: Dozens of left-wing activists rallied in Belgrade after the US operation that captured Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, with demonstrators denouncing Washington and expressing solidarity with Caracas.

➡️ The protest was organized by the New Communist Party of Yugoslavia (NKPJ), a small extra-parliamentary communist group long engaged in Venezuela solidarity actions in Serbia.

✅ @balkanspectator — the leading Balkan news channel in English

—❗️🇦🇱/🇺🇸/🇵🇸 NEW: Albanian PM Edi Rama has been invited by US President Donald Trump to join the Gaza “Board of Peace” as a founding member.

➡️ The new body, chaired by Trump, will oversee the reconstruction of Gaza as part of a UN-backed US plan to demilitarize and rebuild the enclave.

✅ @balkanspectator — the leading Balkan news channel in English

—🇮🇹/🇦🇱 NEW: Italian anti-mafia officials say the ’Ndrangheta remains one of the world’s most powerful criminal organizations in the cocaine market but is now facing growing competition from Albanian trafficking networks across the European Union.

✅ @balkanspectator — the leading Balkan news channel in English

—❗️🇸🇮/🇬🇱 URGENT: Slovenia’s government has approved the deployment of two Slovenian Armed Forces officers to Greenland to join the planning and implementation of Denmark-led NATO exercise Arctic Endurance, part of a broader European show of support for Denmark and Greenland amid US annexation rhetoric.

✅ @balkanspectator — the leading Balkan news channel in English

—🇦🇱 WATCH: Opposition protesters gathered outside the PM's office in Tirana, where some participants threw unidentified white powder in front of the building amid ongoing anti-government demonstrations.

✅ @balkanspectator — the leading Balkan news channel in English