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Kosovo
Europe's youngest declared state, recognized by roughly half the world
Kosovo declared independence from Serbia on February 17, 2008, and has spent the years since collecting recognitions one capital at a time. The United States, most of the European Union, Japan, and much of the Islamic world accept it as a sovereign state. Serbia, which regards it as its Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija, does not, and neither do Russia, China, India, Brazil, or five EU members. Kosovo has joined the IMF, the World Bank, and the Council of Europe's development bank, uses the euro, and issues its own passports, but it holds no seat at the United Nations. Its young, mostly Albanian population lives inside one of Europe's most closely watched political arguments.
Kosovo is a landlocked basin of about 10,900 square kilometers in the central Balkans, ringed by mountains. The Accursed Mountains (Prokletije) along the Albanian and Montenegrin borders rise to Gjeravica at 2,656 meters, and the Sharr range closes off the south toward North Macedonia. Two plains fill the interior: Kosovo Polje, the Field of Blackbirds, around Pristina in the east, and Metohija (Dukagjin) around Peja and Prizren in the west. Albanians make up roughly nine-tenths of the 1.6 million residents. Serbs are concentrated north of the Ibar River around North Mitrovica and in enclaves to the south, where Pristina's authority has been contested on the ground and international peacekeepers of the NATO-led KFOR mission remain deployed.
The land holds medieval Serbian Orthodox monasteries that Serbs regard as the cradle of their church and nation, and an Albanian majority whose autonomy Belgrade revoked in 1989. War in 1998 and 1999 ended after a NATO air campaign, and UN Security Council Resolution 1244 placed Kosovo under UN administration. In 2010 the International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion, requested by Serbia through the General Assembly, finding that the declaration of independence did not violate general international law, while declining to rule on whether Kosovo is a state. Independent counts put recognitions at about 110 of 193 UN members, Kosovo cites around 120, and Serbia, citing withdrawals, cites 84. EU-mediated normalization talks continue, and repeated elections in 2025 and 2026 produced prolonged deadlock in Pristina.