The documentary shows the extraordinary transformation that the Albanian capital has undergone over the last decades.

According to Mayor Erion Veliaj, the European Tirana everyone sees today is indeed a project and a vision that was launched and became tangible with election of Edi Rama as the mayor of the capital city to transform it into the region’s most attractive metropolis.

Mayor Veliaj underlined that Tirana’s transformation is the outcome of a cooperation spirit and extended appreciation to all of those who have provided their contribution and energies to turn the capital into an important destination.

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Dritan Abazovic is the author of a series of analytical and research articles on political and social sciences in leading international journals.

Prime Minister Edi Rama attended today the event to promote the latest book release in three languages, namely Albanian, Montenegrin, and English.

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Prime Minister Edi Rama: Frankly speaking, I wasn’t actually prepared to see such a seriously and meticulously hosted. On the other hand, please take into consideration the fact that I am attending the event both as a colleague and a friend of Abaz, as I already call him, yet I am the only one in this very hall, including the cameramen too, lacking a master degree and I should now comment on a Ph.D. holder.

Therefore, I very much hope will be generous enough and tolerate my low academic level. But beyond that, I believe it would be disingenuous if I were to tell you that I have read the book. I haven’t read the book yet! I received the book two days ago. It was really a nice surprise for me.

I didn’t know that Dritan was a scholar in this field and so serious in this commitment and given that he asked me to attend and not hesitate to comment, he actually provided me with an argument that compensates for the lack of my master degree.

It is definitely a privilege to be the friend if someone, who is a unique and unparalleled phenomenon in the Balkan politics. And I tell you why. This is not because he is a Ph.D. holder, as I am convinced that the Assembly of Albania houses many Ph.D. holders today – I haven’t counted them but I am convinced that the number of Ph.D. holders is higher than those of non-degree holders – but thanks to resorting to action he has had the courage to try and venture to deliver on something that nobody else has ever dared by establishing a political movement, which extends beyond being an ethnic one, and which has successfully done so, because it has survived centuries of prejudice and division between each other and to build a space where regardless of ethnicity, people come together as citizens.

Through his action, Dritan blends his ethics, his ethical sense towards society, the problems of society and the future, courageously overcoming the divisions and building a bridge as the movement is also called, because for me it is not a political party; it is a movement, a creative nucleus I very much hope will survive the time and set a role model for others in other territories, where coexistence between various  ethnic groups has been going on for a very long time and has been consolidated as coexistence of the opposites. While Dritan proposes coexistence as strength, as a community of complementary forces that build up strength.

In Dritan’s attempt to build a bridge, which helps not only every representative of a different ethnic group to find a space for dialogue and interaction with others, but this bridge is also offered to society as a help to overcome long centuries as a whole community, as well as build an approach, with globalism serving for the good and not for the bad – I am going to put it that way – there are many possibilities and this Dritan’s bridge has its foundations precisely on this wisdom that tries to pour with empty vessels and develop another level of understanding and interaction between people.

The book’s epilogue features a quote that is somehow the continuity of what I already said a bit earlier, so I think that overcoming these two or three stages, the book presumably provides the opportunity so that these dilemmas are jointly tackled with the book’s author and other authors revealed here by the author himself, but at the final acknowledgments, Dritan quotes Pierre Hadot: “How a philosopher would find his way now that there are no more schools, there are no dogmas either, and the philosopher has been left alone?”

By asking this question, I think I can conclude my speech in this event to promote not just a book, but the need to delve a bit more and deal with the very pressing topic and the incredible complexity this book seeks to tackle, which of course is much more difficult and much more exhausting and apparently much less rewarding than dealing with the daily gossips, but this is a matter of choice.

It is not Dritan. Dritan is not alone. Dritan enjoys our support and, above all, Dritan has the hope that he best embodies as a unique political phenomenon in our region who has chosen the most difficult path, but perhaps due to the fact that he is the only one who has chosen the most difficult path, he has quite a few followers and maybe he will there are even more because there are always people who expect different solutions than the ones they are used to being offered.

Dritan Abaz, I wholeheartedly wish that you continue to be the guarantor of the bridge and that the bridge becomes wider and wider and that it radiates, not only electorally because that is the least important, but that it radiates regionally as a reflection where others find themselves to build other bridges, which can be political movements, can be social movements, can be academic movements, but to create the possibility that people, who have been doomed by history and the prejudices of history to be divided, can look at each other as people, as fellow citizens or as cohabitants in a time where the divisions of the past can produce many arguments to make today’s politics, but which represent the foundation of tomorrow’s destruction.

Thank you!

Prime Minister Rama said that the author’s thoughts are an asset of Albanian public life and a reference point for the era we are living in.

“First, frankly speaking I feel somehow embarrassed at the presence of all these folks at the book presentation. It is a bit disturbing and if Albanians were to be so fond of books, we would face fewer questions to resolve among each other. But since my and Ali’s presence here supposedly has a role, I would like to very sincerely say that if you really want to create an idea or further develop an idea about Kosovo’s undesired implication in all this international mess, you must certainly read this book.

“Putin’s discordance and animosity with Kosovo is not about any misunderstanding or controversies with the West, but it is about his ambition to materialize a very polar vision of the world with hegemonic Russia at its heart, fighting the liberal order under the U.S. leadership.”

I think this is one of the most significant passages in the book and it is one of those landmarks in this mess created by the Russia-Ukraine war, and what impressed me much is that Putin or Lavrov and others in Moscow, Kosovo are constantly named since the very beginning of the book. If you have noticed it, Albania is constantly mentioned too, and is included on the list of countries for the foreign fighters in Ukraine. A list of the alleged fallen fighters of these international legions in Ukraine and Lavrov declines to comment on others, yet he points out Albanians and Kosovo, citing unfounded figures, as we lack any information whatsoever on alleged nationals of the Republic of Albanian supposedly killed in this conflict.

Another passage in the book as follows: “The current ongoing war has opened the eyes of European politics, radically changing the attitude towards Russia.” Its defeat in Ukraine will positively change the situation in the Balkans.” A chapter ends with this passage, and it would certainly be worth discussing at length, because we can’t tackle everything at a single meeting.

At the factory of lies, the biggest one is the lie about the KLA. And it’s a lie made up under a clear strategy, and it didn’t start with a trial at court of justice. It all started long time ago and it was clearly devised with the aim to discredit the KLA to the point that a special court had to be set by Kosovo with its own hands and with the support, incitement, pressure, coercion by the Western allies, ultimately ending up with something has never happened in the history of International law, the arrest of an incumbent President without any charge against him and the detention of a President without any indictments or charges filed against him.

It took the creation of a supposed or so-called “Yellow House”. Whole world was flooded with “kidneys and livers” that Hashim Thaçi, together with Kadri Veseli and others, supposedly removed from the bodies of Serbs or Albanians they disliked, and sold them in fish or meat markets in Europe. This is an unmatchable horror to totally discredit a liberation war.”

How one can supposedly explain the organ trafficking tale is a tale being used by Russians in other cases too? The organ trafficking issue has again surfaced during the ongoing war in Ukraine, supposedly “being committed by certain segments within the Ukrainian military to the detriment of the Russian population there.”

We are too small to ask and push the United States to reflect, but, for the sake of truth, the White House should really reflect on this issue and the U.S. President should be aware of this issue and should lead this great reflection, because it is not impossible that this whole community of nations to fall into a trap set up by Russia. Even if it was not to be a trap set by Russia in a clear well-thought plan and meticulously implemented step by step, which is very likely if not really the case, the way all this story is made up now serves Russia and it doesn’t serve the West, it does not serve democracy, it does not serve justice, it does not serve the victims of the war themselves.

I would now comment on China, because it is very important in the context of our effort to keep the war away from the region, I at least personally fully agree with Ali on this viewpoint.

“When talking about the areas of influence, I do not think that China will invade territories or turn fragile Balkan democracies into authoritarian systems and states. It should be noted that China’s intention is not to directly hit, in principle, the liberal democracy in the Balkans.

I very much agree, but on the other hand, I think that our position – and by our position I mean both Albania and Kosovo – is correct yet it is worth reflecting.

We must do whatever it takes to keep any possible conflict away from this region. It is not in our interest that Serbia radicalizes and we must do our best in this situation, with Serbia being between two fires, on the one hand, the great pressure of Russia, which is related to and with the great possibility that Russia is going to force Serbia because of the gas, oil and fuel supplies, and the pressure from the West that Serbia is feeling too much, to push as much as possible to a fair understanding of what we should expect from Serbia. Whoever expects Serbia to jump into the fire for the sake of the West, he doesn’t understand at all what could happen because of that. Serbia cannot jump into the fire for the sake of the West, because it is impossible for that to do so, given that around 80% of its population think that Vladimir Putin is right, but, on the other hand, I think it is pretty clear, Serbia can take and stand at a sufficient distance away from Russia so that the flames of this war doesn’t rage and arrive her. We can do our part at this point.

I would like to thank Enver a lot for this book and I am very pleased that in addition to the help it provides us to better understand Russia and to look beyond the everyday life in terms of this relationship, with us being very small, yet surprisingly and unfortunately being at the heart of all this mess, because Kosovo is caught as a hostage to be used for a goal that has nothing to do directly with Kosovo.

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