Inside the Albanian revolution

On 16 May 2026, a revolution began in Zvërnec, a sleepy village on the Albanian coast where Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump planned to build a luxury resort. It spread across the country, as Albanians vented their frustration with a political class accused of corruption and democratic backsliding, headed by Edi Rama, the 13-year prime minister and darling of the European Union. Aris Roussinos visited the fraught country at the height of what is now being called the Flamingo Revolution, speaking to activists, opposition leaders, and even the country’s embattled PM himself — who believes that his people have never had it so good. * * * * * “Why am I living in England?” Avni, an Albanian in his 40s working in London as a builder, asked me angrily, as we walked to the lines of riot police separ