Journalist Dragan Shtavlanin passes away

Dragan Shtavlanin, a journalist and editor of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's Balkan Service, and author of several books and professional papers, died Friday in Prague after a serious illness. He was 62 years old.

Shtavlanin began his career in the second half of the 1980s as one of the youngest journalists at the weekly magazine NIN, which was highly respected and popular at the time. He would continue it at Radio Belgrade.

He joined REL's Balkan Service in 1999.

The path took Shtavlanin from reporter to editor, and he achieved extraordinary results when, during NATO's campaign against Serbia in 1999, he hosted a five-hour program every night for Radio Free Europe.

During those months of fear and uncertainty, REL reached a record audience in Serbia as one of the few objective sources of information, received by reporters present on all sides of the conflict.

Shtavlanin built and coordinated a network of correspondents covering Serbia, Kosovo and Montenegro. He maintained professional and friendly relations with many of them even after 1999, just as he was always welcome among colleagues and friends in all countries of the former Yugoslavia.

In recent years at REL, Shtavlanin launched the "Post Scriptum" video series, concise explanations of global events - from the Balkans to the war in Ukraine; from democratic regression in Hungary to authoritarianism in Turkey; from the tech industry to the spread of China's digital influence.

He is the author of several books; among his most important works are "Cold Peace: Caucasus and Kosovo", a comparative study of conflicts in the former Soviet Union, in which the case of Kosovo served as a key point - based on an interview he gave to REL, and "The Balkanization of the Internet and the 'Death' of Journalists", a book about changes in journalism in the digital age.

Shtavlanin left behind his wife and three children./ REL

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