Confronted with violent protests, Albania’s longtime leader, Edi Rama, on Sunday appealed to young demonstrators for calm, warning that the Balkan nation faced a “terrifying plague” fed by Iran, Russia and left-wing extremists.
Albania’s protest movement began in May and was initially peaceful, led by environmental activists angered by a planned luxury development linked to Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law. But it quickly morphed into a wider eruption of discontent over corruption, living standards and Mr. Rama’s long tenure as prime minister.
Last week, the movement changed shape again when students, upset over the high cost of education and increased living costs, joined the fray, breathing new life into flagging protests. At the same time, a sudden explosion of violence on Thursday brought the capital, Tirana, to a standstill.
On Sunday, masked protesters stormed a police station in central Tirana and set it ablaze with Molotov cocktails. Media reports said five officers were injured. The exterior walls and doors of the ministry of interior and the ministry of infrastructure were also set alight.
The headquarters of Mr. Rama’s governing Socialist Party was attacked, too, its windows smashed by people hurling stones.
Students have moved on from their original complaints over the cost of living and education to declare Mr. Rama’s resignation their sole demand.
The leader of Albania’s main opposition party, Sali Berisha, who has tried to capitalize on the unrest to boost his sagging political fortunes, backed calls for Mr. Rama’s resignation, saying that only this would calm tensions. Protesters have kept their distance from the opposition, demanding that both Mr. Berisha, a former prime minister, and Mr. Rama be sent to jail.
In his first detailed response to the violence, Mr. Rama said on Sunday that students, nominally in the vanguard of the protests, had been “taken hostage” by a small group of 200 to 300 “masked people who have nothing to do with the students” and only want to create chaos and derail Albania’s ambitions to join the European Union. The country is already a member of NATO.
The European Commission, the E.U.’s executive arm in Brussels, said in a statement Sunday that “we condemn the use of violence in Tirana and other cities in Albania, including arson, attacks on state institutions and the destruction of public and private property.” Adding that countries hoping to join the European bloc must handle grievances “in a peaceful manner,” it said: “We welcome the Albanian authorities’ commitment that the right to protest will be protected.”
With images of buildings set ablaze in France by protesters circulating on social media, some Albanian demonstrators have started calling for revolution in their own country. Frustrated by their failure to oust Mr. Rama through months of peaceful protest, they say that they had been inspired by events in France.
Mr. Rama said that security forces had “neutralized” a drone carrying explosives before it could be used to strike the prime minister’s office and set fire to a wooden structure in its courtyard. The drone, he said, was the “work of an outside hand,” without indicating if he had someone in mind. “No young person, no student and no minor would think of such a plan, let alone put it into action,” he said.
Denouncing what he described as “blind violence,” Mr. Rama said: “Young people are frustrated, yes. They are angry. Students want more; they want change. They always have, and they always will. It is in their nature.”
But he said they were being used “almost as human shields” by violent extremists intent on breaking through police lines to attack government buildings, banks and businesses.
“We have seen this same film play out elsewhere, though in a different context: in France, Italy, Portugal, Brussels and Belgium, and Spain,” he said. The prime minister said that “in all these places, we have seen the same phenomenon, this so-called Antifa movement — a plague of lunatics and neo-communists.”
But Albania, he said, unlike countries rocked by Gen-Z protests in Western Europe, has a better chance of holding back chaos because of its brush with anarchy in 1997, when the collapse of get-rich-quick investment schemes led to widespread civil unrest. “We have seen Albania held hostage by madness,” he said.
Mr. Rama, who last year won re-election for a fourth term by a landslide, has held office for 13 years and been in and out of Albanian government since 1998.
He blamed “outside forces” for last week’s abrupt violent turn, saying that tempers had been inflamed by disinformation pumped out on social media by Iran, long hostile to Mr. Rama because his government has refused to expel Iranian dissidents sheltering in Albania, and also Russia.
Alexander Dugin, a Russian philosopher whose virulent nationalism and anti-Western views have found favor in the Kremlin, has cheered on Albanian protesters. In social media post on Saturday, he said Albanians are a “very interesting and brave people” who are “awakening now.”
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