Spent a weekend in Nagorno-Karabakh last month.
If you don’t know what or where Nagorno-Karabakh is… well, that’s healthy and normal. Most people don’t. But it’s pretty interesting, in a depressing sort of way.
When the Soviet Union broke up, it left a number of unresolved ethnic and territorial conflicts around its old frontiers. [...]

Because we just can’t get enough.
Imagine the US and Europe went to Putin tomorrow and said, “Vladimir, this Kosovo thing has gone on long enough. We want to get it off the table.
“So, we’ll agree to letting you annex Transnistria and those dangly bits down in Georgia. Abkhazia and, what, South [...]

This is the title of a post from Seb Bytyci on his South East Europe Online blog. I reproduce the entire post below the fold.
So the UN seems set to adopt a plan which would allow Kosovo to make a giant step on the road to independence. This is hardly surprising, and frankly I see [...]

According to dpa (as related on page 6 of today’s FAZ), the Russian ambassador in Serbia said that Russia would use its UN Security Council veto to put the kibosh on any UN action to recognize the independence of Kosovo. He couched his argument a tiny bit more diplomatically, in that he said Russia would [...]

So the Kosovar Albanians are counting the days until the January 21 elections in Serbia.
Not because they care who wins. If they have a preference, they’d probably want the loathsome nationalist Radical party to win, since that would immediately turn Serbia into an international pariah (again) and make Kosovar independence that much easier. [...]

So Montenegro votes this weekend on secession from Serbia. (Or, to be precise, secession from the dysfunctional and largely notional Federal Union of Serbia and Montenegro.)
Dedicated readers may recall that this vote was the subject of AFOE’s first intra-blog debate a few weeks back. My post on Montenegrin independence can be found here; [...]

Well, by 1630 CET today, the Milan stock market had made a very clear judgment on the outcome of the Italian elections - the MIBTEL index being up just under 1 per cent intraday, despite a pasting for Berlusconi’s own Mediaset..down 1.98 per cent at €9.68 a share. Berlusconi’s departure seems welcome indeed.
More exit poll [...]

Continuing AFOE’s first point-counterpoint debate between two posters, here’s my final post on Montenegrin independence.

Read more… or Read more right here… »

I’ll discuss a few specific points that BG made, then say why I still [...]

Well, we are united in our diversity here at Fistful. I have to say I disagree with almost every point Doug made about Montenegro in his last post, and will respectfully dissect his arguments below. But first off, a plea for some sanity here. Too many people seem to think that the break-up of [...]

So, Montenegro.
Little mountainous state on the Adriatic. Six hundred thousand people, mostly Montenegrins, a few Albanians and whatnot. Was an independent country until 1919, when it got swept up into Yugoslavia. Now it’s part of the “Federal Union of Serbia and Montenegro”, which consists of (1) Serbia, and (2) Montenegro.
And [...]