• Main contenders in Kosovo's snap election (AFP)
• PDK rep at CEC raises alarm: Elections can be threatened by power cuts (Nacionale)
• Rasic: They accepted to be slaves, SNS has been doing that since 2014 (Insajder)
• ECAP fines Serbian List €52,000 for multiple campaign violations (Kossev)
• Trajkovic sentenced to 10 years in prison for war crimes against civilians (media)
• Culture being strangled by Kosovo's political crisis (AFP)
• Kosovo’s power grid operator investing 6.7 mln euro in new substation (SeeNews) 
• Digital rights review: Online aggression, conspiracy theories, seasonal scams (BIRN)
• A year in retrospect for Kosovo-Serbia normalization talks: What lies ahead 2026? (Sbunker)

Main contenders in Kosovo's snap election (AFP)

Kosovo is heading for early elections Sunday after months of political deadlock and failure to form a government -- the only solution its deeply divided parties could agree on to break the stalemate.

Here are the main contenders to be the Balkan nation's next prime minister:

Albin Kurti: eyeing fourth win

Kosovo's caretaker prime minister, Albin Kurti, is widely seen as the unbeatable frontrunner in the race—even after a year of political paralysis during which he failed to form a coalition.

If he wins, it will mark the fourth consecutive time the 50-year-old left-wing leader has crossed the finish line first, securing his position at the helm of the small, landlocked country.

Kurti has left nothing to chance, pouring enormous energy into a two-week snap election campaign, travelling extensively and lobbying across the country.

Once nicknamed "Che Guevara" for his youthful radicalism, Kurti boasts long political experience rooted in Kosovo's independence movement during the war-torn 1990s and later in parliament.

After a brief first term as prime minister from February to June 2020, Kurti's party, Vetevendosje (VV) -- which blends a leftist agenda with fervent nationalism -- won the 2021 snap elections with over half the vote.

He then became the first prime minister to complete a full term since Kosovo's independence. However, in February's election, his party fell short of the numbers needed to govern alone and failed to secure a coalition partner, triggering months of deadlock that ultimately led to Sunday's snap vote.

Kurti and VV still enjoy strong voter support, thanks largely to their reformist and anti-corruption platform. But if Kurti wins on Sunday, he will face intense international pressure to revive dialogue with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic on normalizing relations between the two neighbours.

Bedri Hamza: the challenger

Bedri Hamza, a former central bank governor and newly elected president of the Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK), is seen as Kurti's strongest challenger.

Born out of a guerrilla movement during the war against rule from Belgrade, the PDK dominated Kosovo's political scene for years, riding the wave of wartime popularity. But its influence gradually waned as the country moved beyond the conflict.

The party has since reinvented itself with figures like Hamza, who blends national values with liberal economic policies championing free markets, economic growth, a stronger private sector and social protection.

The 62-year-old graduated from the Faculty of Economics at the University of Pristina and began his career in the late 1980s as head of accounting and finance at a lead metallurgy plant in Mitrovica.

More than three decades later, Hamza returned to the ethnically divided city as mayor of its Albanian-majority south. His tenure is remembered for successfully implementing multi-ethnic projects with the Serb-majority north, including regulating the Ibar River. If elected prime minister, this experience could prove invaluable in building trust with Kosovo's Serb minority, which remains loyal to Belgrade.

A prominent economist, Hamza has served as finance minister, central bank governor and has been a three-term MP.

Knowing that in pro-American Kosovo, political ambitions often hinge on US support, Hamza's first major move after announcing his candidacy was a trip to Washington, where he met senior US officials.

Generally regarded as a man of integrity, Hamza declared after his election as PDK leader that the party "is ready for victory".

Lumir Abdixhiku: young pretender

Lumir Abdixhiku is the youngest candidate for prime minister but leads the country's oldest political party, the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK).

The 42-year-old economist was an academic focusing on tax evasion in transition economies before entering politics and served as Kosovo's infrastructure minister.

Abdixhiku also spent several years as a newspaper columnist, penning the well-known "Letters from Limbo" column in the daily Koha Ditore.

He became LDK leader in 2021, just a month after the party suffered a crushing parliamentary defeat. Abdixhiku pledged reform and delivered, replacing much of its leadership with younger activists. Now the third-largest party in parliament, the LDK could play kingmaker in these elections, as both left and right seek its support for a coalition.

Abdixhiku declared that LDK aims to "take the leadership of Kosovo" and offer "a dignified and European government" if it wins.

Political parties present their visions for Kosovo at Kallxo-run Debates (PI)

With Kosovo heading toward snap parliamentary elections on December 28, 2025, Kallxo.com debates have seen the parties face off over issues such as justice reform, security, energy policy, and governance.

As Kosovo moves towards the snap parliamentary elections scheduled for December 28, 2025, political parties are campaigning in an environment marked by polarisation, institutional fatigue, and pressure from international partners to deliver credible reforms. 

At a time when the impact of disinformation on electoral processes has been widely documented, a series of televised debates aired by Kallxo Përnime has brought representatives of the main political parties face to face, revealing their visions and divisions over issues such as justice reform, security, energy policy, infrastructure development, and the fight against corruption.

These snap elections are a result of Vetëvendosje, LVV, leader Albin Kurti’s failure to form a government on October 26, which left Kosovo in the hands of a caretaker government since the parliamentary elections on February 9, 2025.

Justice Reform: Independence or institutional capture?

Justice reform was the theme that kicked off the national election debates at Kallxo Përnime on December 17, with debaters reflecting on its central role in Kosovo’s EU integration process.

According to the European Commission’s Progress Report, Kosovo has incomplete legislation and weak implementation in the justice sector, falling short of European standards.

The LVV MP candidate, Adnan Rrustemi, said the party, “aims to build an independent, impartial, and efficient justice system, with particular emphasis on fighting high-level corruption.”

Rrustemi highlighted plans to expand the mandate of the Anti-Corruption Agency and to operationalise the Bureau for the Verification and Confiscation of Unjustified Assets, arguing that, “illegally acquired wealth must be returned to the state.”

The Democratic Party of Kosovo, PDK, prioritised the issue of the Specialist Chambers in The Hague. PDK MP candidate Përparim Gruda mentioned plans to adopt a parliamentary resolution calling for a, “fair and normalised process.” 

PDK also pledged to, “increase the number of judges and prosecutors and to accelerate the digitalisation of the justice system.”

Shkemb Manaj from The Democratic League of Kosovo, LDK,  proposed the, “establishment of a State Investigation Centre of Kosovo Police operating under the Special Prosecution,” while Arton Demhasaj from Alliance for the Future of Kosovo, AAK, noted that, “long-term mandates for judges and prosecutors and financial independence as prerequisites for judicial autonomy.”

Read more at: https://shorturl.at/ZJPVl

PDK rep at CEC raises alarm: Elections can be threatened by power cuts (Nacionale)

Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK) representative at the Central Election Commission (CEC), Ilir Gashi, warned in a Facebook post today that the December 28 parliamentary elections could be threatened by electricity cuts. He said that a report from an official meeting between CEC and the Kosovo Energy Distribution System (KEDS) speaks of “an alarming situation”. “KEDS admits that it does not guarantee an uninterrupted electricity supply on election day because of overloads, atmospheric conditions and lack of transmission capacities. Generators: 497 polling stations have generators (not all of them are functional for lighting); 491 polling stations do not have generators. Elections without electricity – a threat to the integrity of the process. The responsible institutions must be held accountable,” Gashi said.

ECAP fines Serbian List €52,000 for multiple campaign violations (Kossev)

The Election Complaints and Appeals Panel (ECAP) has fined the political party Srpska Lista a total of €52,000 this week for violations of election campaign rules.

The latest fine, amounting to €30,000, was imposed following a complaint filed by the Kosovo Alliance. ECAP adopted the decision today, although it is currently available only in Albanian on the institution’s official website.

According to the Panel, the complaint—submitted on Tuesday, December 23—was upheld due to what ECAP described as “violations of the Code of Conduct for political entities, their supporters, and candidates” during the campaign for the snap parliamentary elections scheduled for Sunday, December 28.

As stated in the decision, on December 22 activists of the Kosovo Alliance reportedly observed members of Srpska Lista placing promotional materials at 14 locations on public property in the municipality of Leposavic. The decision lists the alleged locations, while ECAP notes that the complainant submitted photographic evidence to support its claims.

Complaint found to be well-grounded

After reviewing the case, ECAP assessed that the allegations made by the Kosovo Alliance were “well-grounded.” Srpska Lista is required to pay the €30,000 fine within 15 days from the date the decision becomes final.

In addition, the party is obliged to remove all promotional materials placed on public surfaces. Failure to comply within the prescribed deadline, ECAP warned, “constitutes an additional violation that may be subject to further sanctions.”

The Panel also reviewed Srpska Lista’s response to the complaint, in which the party claimed that the same individual had previously filed a complaint regarding the same violation and that Srpska Lista had already been fined €20,000 for it.

However, ECAP dismissed these claims, stating that Srpska Lista failed to submit any evidence to refute the allegations or the documentation provided by the complainant.

“Such claims therefore remain at the level of declaration and are not supported by concrete evidence,” ECAP said in its decision.

Read more at: https://tinyurl.com/2bhxjutf

Rasic: They accepted to be slaves, SNS has been doing that since 2014 (Insajder)

The news website reported on Thursday that Gordana Mihajlovic from Nenad Rasic’s party “For Freedom, Justice and Survival” announced that day she is leaving that party and that she does not want to participate in the elections on December 28, because, as she emphasized, she realized over time that his policy is against the interests of the Serbian people in Kosovo. She is the only candidate for MP from Zubin Potok of this party. Rasic told Insajder that Mihajlovic accepted to be “a commodity which someone bought”.

On Wednesday, Sladjan Nikolcevic, the only candidate for the MP of that party from the Strpce Municipal Board, left Rasic’s party, saying that he is aware that Rasic’s actions are based on personal interest and lead to further division and weakening of the position of the Serbian people in Kosovo.

Rasic confirmed to Insajder that Mihajlovic and Nikolcevic left his party. “To cut a long story short, I would say that they became a commodity which the customer purchased at a price that we will get to know during today or tomorrow. Honestly, they showed all their moral values with this, even though they were good actors because they said that they represented our party well” he stated.

Rasic added that situations like this have been happening since 2014. “SNS has been doing this for many years, unfortunately, successfully in this case. This purchasing methodology is widely known,” he said.

Rasic also said that the two candidates for MPs who left the party will not affect their electorate, because they had limited influence in their environment. “We will deal with reorganization in those committees, but it is tragic that they have become goods and tools for one-time use. I feel sorry for them both, I am sure they have reasons, but they had to know that if they ever sell their souls to the devil or are bought for something that I don’t know now what it is, then in a moral context it has consequences for themselves. It affects us in that moral sense because we are disappointed in them, but in organizational terms it will not affect us,” Rasic concluded.

Court sentences Trajkovic to 10 years in prison for war crimes against civilians (media)

All news websites report that the Basic Court in Pristina has sentenced today Sladjan Trajkovic to 10 years in prison on charges of war crimes against civilians in 1998-1999 in the village of Reznik in the municipality of Vushtrri.

The Special Prosecution said in a statement that it welcomes the court’s verdict in the case against Trajkovic. “The Special Prosecution of the Republic of Kosovo remains committed to the prosecution of crimes committed during the war in Kosovo, in order to ensure justice for the victims and establish criminal responsibility for the perpetrators, in line with international standards,” the prosecution said.

Prishtina Insight reports that according to the indictment, Trajkovic was a member of Serbian police, military, and paramilitary forces and contributed to “killings, raids, beatings, abuse, illegal arrests, torture, cruel and inhuman treatment, detention under slavery-like conditions, and the forced displacement of thousands of Albanian civilians.”

Bogdan Lazic, a lawyer of Trajkovic, called the verdict unfair and announced he would appeal it. “The defence strongly disagrees with the verdict because the court did not correctly evaluate all the evidence,” Lazic was quoted saying by the Kossev news agency.

The court ruled that the time Trajkovic has already spent in pretrial detention will be credited toward his sentence. The indictment was filed on July 12, 2023, following Trajkovic’s arrest on December 15, 2022. 

During the 1998-1999 Kosovo war, more than 13,000 civilians were killed, while thousands went missing. More than 1,600 people remain unaccounted for.

Culture being strangled by Kosovo's political crisis (AFP)

Kosovo's oldest cinema has been dark and silent for years as the famous theatre slowly disintegrates under a leaky roof.

Signs warn passers-by in the historic city of Prizren that parts of the Lumbardhi's crumbling facade could fall while it waits for its long-promised refurbishment.

"The city deserves to have the cinema renovated and preserved. Only junkies gathering there benefit from it now," nextdoor neighbour butcher Arsim Futko, 62, told AFP.

For seven years, it waited for a European Union-funded revamp, only for the money to be suddenly withdrawn with little explanation.

Now it awaits similar repairs promised by the national government that has since been paralysed by inconclusive elections in February.

And it is anyone's guess whether the new government that will come out of Sunday's snap election will keep the promise.

'Collateral damage'

Cinema director Ares Shporta said the cinema has become "collateral damage" in a broader geopolitical game after the EU hit his country with sanctions in 2023.

The delayed repairs "affected our morale, it affected our lives, it affected the trust of the community in us," Shporta said.

Brussels slapped Kosovo with sanctions over heightened tensions between the government and the ethnic Serb minority that live in parts of the country as Pristina pushed to exert more control over areas still tightly linked to Belgrade.

Read more at: https://shorturl.at/CzYTL

Kosovo’s power grid operator investing 6.7 mln euro in new substation (SeeNews) 

Kosovo's power grid operator KOSTT said it has broken ground for a new 220/35/10(20) kV substation in the central town of Malisheve, an investment of 6.7 million euro ($8 million).

“This investment creates higher transmission capacities and greater supply stability, complementing and reinforcing the existing 35 kV network,” KOSTT said in a Linkedin post on Tuesday.

The project, to be fully financed by KOSTT, involves the installation of 40 MVA electricity transformers and the construction of a 220 kV transmission line, a first for Malisheve.

Digital rights review: Online aggression, conspiracy theories, seasonal scams (BIRN)

BIRN’s monitoring of digital rights violations across ten countries in Southeast Europe over the past two months revealed a wide range of violations, including the spreading of politically-motivated hate speech and ethnic intolerance spread online.

In Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bosnian Serb political leader Milorad Dodik, who has been barred from holding office by a court ruling but was supporting a proxy candidate, opened the presidential campaign in the Republika Srpska entity with inflammatory rhetoric targeting Bosniaks, referring to them as “Muslims, enemies, and a destructive factor in Republika Srpska”.

Dodik also likened Bosniaks to “amoebas moving in” and calling for the “prevention of further Islamisation”. Despite repeated fines from the Central Election Commission, such narratives continue to circulate offline and online, reinforcing inter-ethnic hostility.

In Croatia, activities by far-right groups were also amplified across social media and online forums after activists disrupted the ‘Days of Serbian Culture’ in Split and Zagreb. Masked men chanted slogans of the World War II-era Nazi-allied Ustasha movement, forcibly interrupted cultural events and spray-painted threats such as “Kill the Serb”. Meanwhile, in an online statement, the Croatian Disabled Homeland War Veterans’ Association alleged that the nationalist “Greater Serbia” narrative has “metastasised” throughout the Serb community in Croatia, citing the cultural events and anti-fascist marches as ‘proof’.

In North Macedonia, which has a large ethnic Albanian population, a government event marking the annual ‘Albanian Alphabet Day’ sparked ethnic slurs and hate speech comments online targeting the Albanians minority and Macedonian officials.

Serbia saw a comparable case: a photo of two students hugging during a protest, one wearing a hijab and the other a traditional šajkača (Serbian cap), provoked a torrent of online hostility and even death threats against the students.

In Montenegro, following reports of an attack on a Montenegrin man allegedly by foreign nationals (initially and incorrectly identified as Turkish) a wave of online hate speech targeting Turks emerged. This was followed by street protests featuring chants such as “Turks out” and “Kill the Turk”, as well as acts of vandalism against Turkish-owned restaurants and shops and a vehicle bearing Turkish license plates. Several politicians further fuelled the situation by spreading disinformation about what they alleged “Ottomanisation” of the country. In this climate, the government decided to abolish Montenegro’s visa-free regime for Turkish citizens.

In another case, a viral New Year’s image was misused to spread derogatory and hate-filled comments targeting residents of Ulcinj, a Montenegrin town with a significant Albanian population.

In Kosovo, AI-generated content has been misused in several cases to spread disinformation, including false depictions of senior politicians from Kosovo and Serbia appearing together. In another instance, such content was used to circulate claims about the existence of a secret deal to divide northern Kosovo. These false narratives caused confusion and some online insults directed at politicians.

BIRN’s monitors reported that such cases demonstrate how political rhetoric, disinformation and offline interventions interact with online amplification to normalise hate speech and ethnic intolerance, deepening societal divisions.

Read more at: https://shorturl.at/vat1I

A year in retrospect for Kosovo-Serbia normalization talks: What lies ahead in 2026? (Sbunker)

Opinion by Milos Pavkovic.

Except for the appointment of Peter Sorensen as the EU Special Representative (EUSR) for the EU-facilitated Kosovo-Serbia Dialogue, 2025 did not bring any major developments in the normalization process between Kosovo and Serbia. No high-level political meetings took place, marking two years since Kurti and Vucic last met.

Kosovo and Serbia shared a common experience throughout the year. Both went through intense internal political dynamics marked by a series of institutional crises, with domestic developments largely shaping and constraining their respective political agendas.

Although at first glance it seems that 2025 was lost with no progress in the Dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia, some notable processes took place during this year. This, together with the more proactive role of the EU, provides a good foundation for more positive and concrete results in 2026.

A perpetual state of stagnation

Kosovo spent most of the year in political deadlock after the parliamentary election held in February 2025 failed to produce a governing majority. As a result, Kosovo is now set to hold snap election on December 28, an unusually timed election date that falls in the midst of the winter holiday season.

Kosovo’s Parliament repeatedly failed to elect a Speaker after the ruling Self-Determination Movement party nominated Albulena Haxhiu 54 times, with each attempt falling short of the required majority. The ruling party refused to compromise, despite holding only 42% of the seats, effectively blocking the formation of a new government and prolonging the institutional deadlock.

On the other hand, Serbia did not hold elections, despite sustained calls from student-led protest movements demanding them following the collapse of the train canopy in Novi Sad. Throughout 2025, the country was largely paralyzed by a wave of popular protests that ignited levels of public unrest unseen in decades.

Although Prime Minister Vucevic resigned in January 2025, and a new government was formed without calling snap elections, the ruling authorities remained in a constant defensive posture as the student protests expanded rapidly and gained broader public support.

Read more at: https://shorturl.at/nijjv