—❗️💥🇧🇬 NEW: A drone exploded inside Bulgarian territory after reportedly arriving from the direction of Romania.

➡️ The aircraft detonated around 100 meters inside Bulgaria near the former Kardam border crossing, roughly one kilometer from a compressor station on the Trans-Balkan gas pipeline.

➡️ Bulgaria’s preliminary assessment points to a Maya decoy drone used by Ukrainian forces, though Sofia says there is no indication the incident was deliberate.

➡️ Bulgaria will redeploy anti-drone capabilities from its Turkish border toward Romania and raise the incident at the North Atlantic Council, underscoring the vulnerability of NATO airspace and critical energy infrastructure near Ukraine.

✅ @balkanspectator — the leading Balkan news channel in English

—❗️💥🇲🇩 NEW: A military drone exploded in Moldova near the Ukrainian border, close to Crocmaz in the Ștefan Vodă district.

➡️ Moldovan police found debris preliminarily identified as belonging to a combat drone.

➡️ The incident follows a similar drone-related explosion in Bulgaria and reinforces growing concerns over Moldova’s exposure to spillover from the situation in Ukraine, including the need for stronger anti-drone capabilities.

✅ @balkanspectator — the leading Balkan news channel in English

—🇷🇸 Serbia's President Aleksandar Vučić:

27 powerful leaders, representing 500 million people. I stand up alone and defend Serbia, and defend the position of Serbia.

They ask me: 'Why haven't you introduced sanctions against Russia? You are the only one here who is destroying European unity.'

When we get to the meeting, then they throw everything but the kitchen sink at me, because of Russia.

You demand that I be someone's puppet, whether Russian or Western.

I won't be anyone's puppet. I am a Serb and the Serbian president. And remember that once and for all.

It is my job to care for this country. I was pulling it out of complete hopelessness through the most difficult plans, risking my own life.

🔗 Clash Report

✅ @balkanspectator — the leading Balkan news channel in English

—❗️🇧🇬/🇺🇦 UPDATE: Bulgaria has formally summoned Ukrainian Ambassador Olesia Ilashchuk over the explosive-laden drone that crashed near Kardam.

✅ @balkanspectator — the leading Balkan news channel in English

—Polymarket: "Researchers warn of a “very rapid and very unsettling change” in mathematics as AI solves a growing number of longstanding problems."

✅ @balkanspectator — the leading Balkan news channel in English

—📈🇷🇸 Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić:

In terms of its growth rate in the first six months of this year, Serbia was the most successful country in Europe. It means that Serbia is advancing faster than any other country in Europe, according to Eurostat data.

🔗 Full statement published by Serbia's Office for Public and Cultural Diplomacy

✅ @balkanspectator — the leading Balkan news channel in English

—🇷🇺/🇽🇰/🇷🇸 EXCLUSIVE: Balkan Spectator has reached out to a Russian source to assess the extent of claims circulating on social media that "Russian Telegram groups" are calling on Moscow to recognize Kosovo following Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić's meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

➡️ While some critics have accused Vučić of failing to show a brotherly attitude toward Russia, and others have claimed that Europe forced the meeting, our source indicates that any calls for Russia to recognize Kosovo are, if they exist at all, confined to the political fringe.

✅ @balkanspectator — the leading Balkan news channel in English

—🇷🇸/🇪🇺 BTA: "Serbia Aims to Join Schengen Area by End of 2027, European Integration Minister Says."

✅ @balkanspectator — the leading Balkan news channel in English

🌍🔭 — On this August 12, 2026, a sequence of astronomic events is taking place

🪐 Before the sun rise of this August's day, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune were seen totally aligned at Earth's sky as seen in a video shared by a netizen

🌘 As now, total solar eclipse is being seen in the skies of Western Europe, specially Portugal and Spain, as well Iceland

⚡️ Later today, the Perseid meteor shower will reach its peak and allow most of Earth's Northern Hemisphere citizens to see it in full might, combed with a New Moon, which means no moonlight would wash them out of the sky.

🚀 US' NASA will start broadcasting live views of the eclipse beginning at 1:15pm ET (1715 UTC)

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—🇲🇩❌🇷🇺 WATCH: Moldovan Defense Minister Anatolie Nosatîi interrupted a journalist who addressed him in Russian, saying, “I don’t understand you.”

➡️ He responded after she repeated the question in Romanian and praised her for using the state language.

➡️ His official CV reportedly states that he speaks Russian and studied in Ukraine for four years.

✅ @balkanspectator — the leading Balkan news channel in English

🇷🇸❌🪖🇽🇰 — Serbia's President Aleksandar Vučić on International Law and comparisons between Ukraine and Serbia:

Why did you take 14% of Serbian territory, which was guaranteed by UN Charter and by UN resolution as well?

And it was happening just after the aggression against the Republic of Serbia, which was led by 19 NATO countries without permission of the Security Council of the United Nations.

Wasn't that an opening of a big Pandora's box? And at the end, actually, it was. And you cannot have this kind of double standards.

We do support territorial integrity of Ukraine, but we have this right to say, and even with that, we are saying we need to reach a peace.

And you are saying, well, we need to avoid, we need to avert any kind of wrong messages to the world.

But we have already had wrong messages.

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—❗️☢️🇷🇴 POLITICO: Romania has shut down Cernavodă’s second and last operating nuclear reactor after the drought-hit Danube River fell too low to supply its cooling pumps.

✅ @balkanspectator — the leading Balkan news channel in English

—🇲🇩/🇷🇺 UPDATE: Moldova says preliminary analysis indicates the drone that exploded near Crocmaz was Russian-powered and more advanced than previous drones found on Moldovan territory.

✅ @balkanspectator — the leading Balkan news channel in English