Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday that the purchase of S-400 defense systems from Russia was a done deal, adding that Ankara would also jointly produce S-500 defense systems with Moscow.

Anti-government protesters in Albania's capital, Tirana, hurled gasoline grenades and flares at riot police in front of the main government building and national police headquarters Monday evening, despite the US diplomats and EU lawmakers appealed for order and calm. Police officers did not respond to the violence, news wires reported.

Albanian opposition protesters hurled petrol bombs at the entrance of Prime Minister Edi Rama’s office on Saturday, after three months of demonstrations calling for him to quit over alleged election fraud and corruption. Chanting “We want a European Albania”, the slogan of pro-democracy protests when the Balkan country dumped communism in 1990, they renewed the call they made since February for early elections after their lawmakers also cut ties with parliament.

A Montenegrin court handed last Thursday jail sentences to 14 people, including opposition politicians, over an alleged Russia-backed coup plot in 2016. The judge said the plot was aimed at stopping Montenegro from joining NATO. The two sentenced opposition politicians, Andrija Mancic and Milan Knezevic, got five years in jail each.

Voters in North Macedonia on Sunday elected government-backed candidate Stevo Pendarovski to become the country’s next president, news wires reported.  The a joint candidate of the governing Social Democrats and 30 smaller parties received about 52% of the vote, while his opponent Gordana Siljanovska Davkova, backed by the opposition, got about 45%.

North Macedonia voters will return to polling stations on Sunday for the presidential run-off. The key candidates Stevo Pendarovski and his rival Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova came out as winners in the first round held on 21 April with very close results: 42.8% to 42.2%.

On Monday evening, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron hosted a Western Balkans summit in Berlin to restart deadlocked talks between Serbia and Kosovo. The leaders of France and Germany warned Belgrade and Pristina, whose relationship worsen in the last six months, that resolving their dispute was crucial to future ties with the European Union.

Macedonia’s pro-Western candidate, Stevo Pendarovski, and his main rival Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova emerged tied in the first round of presidential vote dominated by deep divisions over a change of the country’s name to North Macedonia under a deal with Greece. Results on the State Election Commission website based on 98% of the votes counted showed Pendarovski got 42.7% of the votes, while Siljanovska-Davkova had 42.5% of the votes.

Macedonians vote in a presidential election on Sunday shaping up as an unofficial referendum on the hotly disputed change of the country’s name to North Macedonia under a deal with Greece. The country held an actual referendum on the issue last year but it was invalidated due to insufficient turnout. Skopje’s parliament later ratified the accord, which opened the door to Macedonian membership of the EU and NATO.

Dozens of women and children, relatives of Kosovo jihadists fighting in Syria, were flown back home by plane on Saturday under heavy security. “The planned operation for the return of some of our citizens from Syria has ended successfully,” Justice Minister Abelrad Tahiri said at the airport early on Saturday.Details would be released later in the day, he said.