Brussels is often keen to portray itself as a champion of media freedom, but this week it came under severe criticism from its own press corps -- and on World Press Freedom Day, to boot.

Journalists were irked that they weren't given a single opportunity to pose questions to Chinese Vice Prime Minister Li Keqiang during his three-day visit to the Belgian capital.

Li is tipped to become China's next prime minister in a major reshuffle at the top of the Chinese Communist Party later this year. The trip to Brussels was meant to be an opportunity for him to forge working relationships with EU leaders such as Jose Manuel Barroso and Herman Van Rompuy.

Traditionally, both the president of the European Commission (Barroso) and the president of the European Council (Van Rompuy) hold press points with visiting foreign leaders, where reporters are allowed to ask a couple of questions.

Not this time.

A commission spokesperson noted dryly that "it takes two to tango" and said that a press point was an option but that it wasn't taken up. That left journalists to speculate that Beijing wanted to avoid discussing recent events concerning Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng and the defenestrated party functionary Bo Xilai openly.

The Brussels media was assured, however, of several opportunities to take pictures of Li and promised a press release with the text of three declarations agreed by Brussels and Beijing on issues such as energy, electricity markets, and sustainable urbanization.

-- Rikard Jozwiak

Serbians go to the polls on May 6 for local, parliamentary, and presidential elections on the same day.

Reason enough for voters to be confused.

But as Serbian political cartoonist Corax suggests in the picture above, Serbian voters have a bigger problem than that -- they have two frontrunners offering similar choices.

His point is that President Boris Tadic (left) is pro-European but is acting nationalist to steal votes from rival Tomislav Nikolic.

And nationalist Nikolic (right) is doing the same in reverse by acting pro-European.

That, the cartoonist says, puts voters in the position of "Buridan's Ass," the famous metaphor 14th-century French philosopher Jean Buridan used to illustrate a paradox of free will.

The paradox: when a hungry person cannot rationally choose between two equally distant sources of food, he may starve from indecision.

With Tadic and Nikolic running neck-and-neck in polls and unemployment in Serbia at 24 percent, many Serbs find the metaphor only too apt.

Corax's cartoon was commissioned by RFE/RL's Balkan Service.

The Week Ahead is a detailed listing of key events of the coming week affecting RFE/RL's broadcast region.

Now on Twitter! Daily updates at @The_Week_Ahead.


MONDAY, April 30:

Armenia/Iran: Armenian Foreign Minister Edvard Nalbandian pays an official visit to Tehran.

Balkans: The European Policy Center in Brussels holds a discussion titled "Regional Cooperation In The Balkans: Time For A New Boost."

China/Russia: China’s Deputy Premier Li Keqiang visits Tatarstan.

Russia/Sudan: Sudanese Foreign Minister Ali Karti visits Moscow, meets with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

UNESCO: International Jazz Day.

World: Denver hosts Amnesty International's annual general meeting and human rights conference (to May 1).

World: The Preparatory Committee for the 2015 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons holds its first session in Vienna (to May 11).


TUESDAY, May 1:

Azerbaijan/UN: Azerbaijan assumes the monthly rotating Presidency of the UN Security Council.

World: Freedom House publishes its annual press freedom survey Freedom of the Press 2012.

World: Labor Day, a public holiday or day of festivities held in honor of working people in many countries.

WTO: Geneva hosts the WTO General Council meeting (to May 2).


WEDNESDAY, May 2:

Afghanistan: The UN refugee agency and the government of Switzerland co-host an international conference in Geneva on the Afghan displacement situation (to May 3).

Georgia/EU: Tbilisi hosts the 14th EU-Georgia Parliamentary Cooperation Committee meeting (to May 3).  

Kazakhstan: Kazakh Prime Minister Karim Massimov meets with EU President Herman Van Rompuy in Brussels.


THURSDAY, May 3:

Azerbaijan: The Swedish Press Freedom Award 2012 to be presented to Malahat Nasibova for her fearless work to defend the freedom of the press, the freedom of speech, democracy, and human rights in Azerbaijan.

EU: The European Policy Center in Brussels holds a discussion on the Eastern Partnership.

Kazakhstan: Astana hosts an international military exhibition "KADEX–2012" (to May 6).

Kazakhstan/CSTO: A session of the Defense Ministers Council of the Collective Security Treaty Organization starts in Astana.

Moldova: An IMF delegation visits Chisinau to hold discussions with the authorities (to May 17).

Russia: Moscow hosts a high-level conference on missile defense (to May 4).

Tajikistan/EU: A delegation of nine MEPs visits Dushanbe for the second Parliamentary Cooperation Committee meeting (to May 5).

UN: World Press Freedom Day.


FRIDAY, May 4:

Armenia: A 25-member PACE delegation, led by Baroness Nicholson, visits Armenia to observe the parliamentary elections alongside observers from the Parliamentary Assembly of the OSCE, the European Parliament, and the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) of the OSCE (to May 7).

Iran: The second round of parliamentary elections.

Serbia: A 21-member PACE delegation, led by Jean-Charles Gardetto, visits Serbia to observe the parliamentary and presidential elections alongside observers from the Parliamentary Assembly of the OSCE and the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) of the OSCE (to May 7).


SUNDAY, May 6:

Armenia: Parliamentary elections.

Russia: Russian opposition plans to hold mass protest march in Moscow and other cities.

Serbia: Presidential and parliamentary elections.

If "all problems" between Ukraine and the EU were solved, the parliament in Kyiv could pass extraordinary legislation to set former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko free from jail.

That's what Ukraine’s First Deputy Prime Minister Valeriy Khoroshkovskiy was quoted as saying by EurActiv, the specialized European Union affairs portal. (Euractiv had earlier quoted Khoroshkovskiy as saying that Ukraine would set Tymoshenko free if the EU signs an association agreement with Kyiv, but this was subsequently retracted.)

Khoroshkovskiy said this after European journalists pressed him to explain what he meant when he said that domestic legislation could be changed if it becomes a major obstacle to Ukraine’s ambition of closer ties with the EU.

Ukraine and the EU have initialed an Association and Free Trade Agreement. Signing is contingent on Ukraine cleaning up its act, ending selective justice, and conducting free-and-fair parliamentary elections on October 28.

​​The EU is upset over the treatment of former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who is currently serving seven years in prison on charges of abuse of authority. She is on a hunger strike to protest her treatment and was treated roughly by prison guards as she was taken away to a clinic last week.

Tymoshenko, it would seem, has become a bargaining chip for the Ukrainian administration.

Ukrainian politicians believe that deals like this are normal. After all, they conduct these kinds of transactions among themselves all the time. Why should dealing with Europe be any different?

Cynicism? Stupidity? Arrogance? Inelegance? Most likely all of the above, and then some.

People like Khoroshkovskiy forget that we live in the Internet age. When you put your foot in your mouth, word gets out very quickly.

Ukraine’s most popular political website, Ukrainska Pravda,
quickly jumped all over the deputy prime minister's statement and called it for what it appeared to be: blackmail.

The beleagured Khoroshkovskiy responded by saying that his words had been taken out of context and that there was likely an error in translation. (This is presumably why Euractiv made the aforementioned amendment to its article.)

But Khoroshkovskiy knows English well. He could have picked up on that “error” and set the record straight right away, had he wanted to.

Khoroshkovskiy’s clowning with the press didn’t end there. When asked if Ukraine would lean closer to Russia if its EU aspirations do not come to fruition, Khoroshkovskiy nodded. Asked the same question again, he nodded again. When he was asked a third time, he said, "No." Everyone laughed.

Khoroshkovskiy is a multimillionaire and a close ally of Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovych. He has come a long way from his first jobs as a mechanic and a driver for Kyiv’s zoo.  He is part of the Firtash group, controlled by billionaire Dmytro Firtash, stakeholder of a company called RosUkrEnergo, once the one-and-only trader of Russian gas to Ukraine.

Tymoshenko’s 2009 gas deal with Russia, for which she is now serving jail time, removed RosUkrEnergo from the Russian-Ukrainian gas equation.

-- Irena Chalupa

This week, the "Tunnel of Hope," which served as Sarajevo's main connection to the outside world during the 44-month siege that began the Bosnian war of 1992-95, was taken over by the Canton of Sarajevo and the Memorial Fund.

Construction of the tunnel began in January 1993 and was finished six months later. It ran for about 800 meters from the Dobrinja district, under the UN-controlled airport, to the Butimir district, and was a route for much-needed supplies, as well as a means of bypassing the arms embargo. An oil pipeline and power cable were also added.

Some estimates say 20 million tons of food came in through the tunnel, about 1.5 meters high and a meter wide, and a million people went through it. It was dug entirely by volunteers working with picks and shovels.

All but 25 meters of the tunnel has since collapsed or was filled in to prevent the airport runways from caving in, and been turned into a museum. 

RFE/RL's Balkan Service talked to the man who has taken care of the tunnel since the war, Edis Kolar, in the video report below (in Serbo-Croatian):
​​

Valeria Lukyanova is a model from Ukraine who claims to be the "most famous Russian woman on the Russian-speaking Internet."

This is because she has used plastic surgery to make herself into a "real-life Barbie doll." Some claim that the images she has posted on her blog and her Facebook page are actually digitally altered. And she's not the only Russian woman to attempt to look like the iconic doll.



Her indulgence in plastic surgery is hardly unique in Russia, however, where clinics have sprouted up since the 1990s and business is booming, especially in Moscow. Some critics call it "one of the most unregulated areas in Russian health care" and there have even been reports of deaths related to plastic surgery gone wrong.

And the trend has produced its share of disasters, which many a Russian site has been happy to document.

The Central Asian country of Turkmenistan is getting set for its annual Horse Day celebrations, which traditionally take place on the last Sunday of April.

Established in the early years of the state's independence, this national holiday is a gala equestrian festival that rejoices in the unique status of the horse in Turkmen culture.

In particular, the native Akhal-Teke breed has pride of place in the country and is highly valued for its ability to cover long distances in the desert with little water.

Such is the iconic nature of the elegant Akhal-Teke that the country's authoritarian founder, Saparmurat Niyazov, once even described them as "the wings of our people and its national pride."

Until his death in 2006, he regularly gave these horses as gifts to world leaders.

Niyazov's equally authoritarian successor, Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, is an equally keen horseman and his equestrian prowess is very much part of the personality cult that typifies his leadership.

Besides the recent unveiling of a statue showing the Turkmen leader astride one of his trusty steeds, Berdymukhammedov has also written a book on horse racing, which he kindly bestows on foreign dignitaries and is available in all bookshops in Turkmenistan.

He has also burnished his reputation by showing off his horse-riding skills in front of a packed hippodrome in the capital, Ashgabat.

WATCH: Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov puts his horse through its paces.


Given Berdymukhammedov's passion for the ponies, it seems he is intent on making sure everyone takes part in the fun on Horse Day.

According to Chronicles of Turkmenistan, government officials have been ordered to attend horse races that have been organized as part of the festivities. 

Apparently, high-school students have also been told that they are expected to spend the entire national holiday at the races.

And just in case any Turkmen might underestimate the importance of Horse Day, Eurasianet.org reports that the state newspaper "Neutralny Turkmenistan" has spent the past few days publishing heartfelt poems extolling the virtues of the country's equine beasts and its "preeminent jockey" -- Berdymukhammedov, who is often referred to by his self-coined nickname, "Arkadag" or "The Protector."