—🇦🇱/🇽🇰/🇲🇰 NEW: Albania is observing Nowruz, the Iranian New Year, as a national public holiday today, reflecting the country’s strong Bektashi heritage and broader multifaith participation in the festival.

➡️ Bektashi Muslim communities in Kosovo and North Macedonia are also marking the holiday, which combines the Persian New Year with local religious traditions.

✅ @balkanspectator — the leading Balkan news channel in English

—❗️🇬🇷/🇸🇦/🇮🇷 NEW: Greek crews operating Patriot air defense batteries in Saudi Arabia have shot down two Iranian ballistic missiles targeting the SAMREF oil refinery in Yanbu on the Red Sea coast.

🔗 Visegrád 24

✅ @balkanspectator — the leading Balkan news channel in English

—🇬🇷🤝🇸🇦 NOTE: Greece deployed a Patriot battery and around 120–130 troops to Saudi Arabia under a 2021 defence deal, tasked with protecting refineries and other critical energy infrastructure from missile and drone attacks.

➡️ Riyadh covers the costs and upgrades, while Athens gains live missile‑defence experience and political capital with Saudi Arabia, the US and key Gulf partners.

✅ @balkanspectator — the leading Balkan news channel in English

—❗️🇷🇸/🇦🇪 NEW: Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić made a surprise visit to the United Arab Emirates, where he held talks with UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

➡️ Vučić said that “amid serious tensions, it is important to support our friends and responsibly seek peace and stability,” underlining the strategic weight of the Serbia–UAE partnership.

✅ @balkanspectator — the leading Balkan news channel in English

—⚡️🇷🇴 NEW: Romania deployed one of Europe's largest operational Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) networks, powered by IonQ technology.

➡️ It spans over 1,500 km with 36 quantum-secured links, connecting major cities including Bucharest, Iași, Timișoara, Craiova, Cluj-Napoca, and Constanța and securing critical sectors like government, healthcare, research, and infrastructure.

➡️ Any attempt to intercept or eavesdrop on the quantum channel disturbs the system and is immediately detectable, making the keys theoretically unbreakable by current or near-future computing (including quantum computers that could break classical encryption).

🔗 Brave Romania

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—🗳🇸🇮 POLITICO: Slovenian PM Robert Golob’s liberals won yesterday’s national election by a narrow margin over former right-wing populist leader Janez Janša.

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—🇧🇬/🇷🇴 NEW: Bulgaria and Romania will build an AI-based cross-border monitoring system to track pollution in the Danube River caused by shipping.

➡️ The system will deploy sensors, IT tools, and mobile inspection units on the Bulgarian–Romanian stretch of the river.

✅ @balkanspectator — the leading Balkan news channel in English

—🇲🇩/🇷🇺/🇲🇩 NEW: After 34 years, Moldovan soldiers serving in the Joint Peacekeeping Forces along the Nistru river Security Zone are now wearing the Moldovan flag on their shoulders, ending a long‑standing rule under which only Russian peacekeepers displayed national insignia.

➡️ The change follows pressure from veterans of the 1992 Transnistrian war, who denounced as humiliating a 1993 decision that forced Moldovan troops to use neutral “MP” patches even on their own territory while Russian personnel kept their national symbols.

✅ @balkanspectator — the leading Balkan news channel in English

—🇺🇸❌🇷🇸 On this day, 27 years ago, NATO launched its air campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

✅ @balkanspectator — the leading Balkan news channel in English

—🇷🇺/🇷🇸 Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs:

On March 24, 1999, NATO launched a military aggression against Yugoslavia

This marked the beginning of the West’s quest to substitute legitimate mechanisms governing international relations with what they call a rules-based order

🔗 MFA Russia

✅ @balkanspectator — the leading Balkan news channel in English