Category: Central/Eastern Europe

Zelenskiy’s Ukraine well-placed to influence, compete with Russia

     

Ukraine is “the single most important front of [the] war against authoritarian expansion,” according to Stanford University’s Francis Fukuyama. “Clearly it matters a lot to Putin that Ukraine does not… Read more »

Russia’s crony capitalism: from market economy to kleptocracy?

     

Russia’s main problem isn’t populism, but elitism in two basic forms, says analyst Emil Pain, the paternalist one in the state based on tradition and the “snobbish” version held many… Read more »

Delicate balancing act: freedom of press vs freedom from disinfomation

     

  This year’s World Press Freedom Day focuses on ‘journalism and elections in times of disinformation’, Teresa Mioli writes for the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas. Western policymakers and… Read more »

‘Pushing on an Open Door’: countering illiberal alliances in the Western Balkans

     

Nearly two decades after the cessation of violent conflict in the Western Balkans and efforts by the international community to support democratic reform, analysis suggests that most countries in the… Read more »

Serbia’s ‘Orbanization’: Vucic heads towards competitive authoritarianism

     

  Serbians are finally rising up against President Aleksandar Vucic’s regime, note analysts Boban Stojanović and Fernando Casal Bértoa. For the last five months, massive protests against his reign, and especially… Read more »

Balkans split between East and West (but still room for engagement)

     

With the exception of Kosovo (53 percent), respondents from Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), North Macedonia or Serbia generally do not feel that they belong definitively to either West or East, according to a new poll by the… Read more »

Ukraine shows possibility of swimming against populist tide

     

In our current moment of global illiberalism, Ukrainians’ election of Volodymyr Zelenskyr reminds us of the possibility of swimming against the tide of xenophobic populism, according to David N. Myers,… Read more »

Debunking ‘enduring myth’ that EU’s eastern member states less favorable to democratic values

     

A new analysis challenges the “enduring myth” that the European Union’s eastern member states are less favorable to the democratic values set out in Article Two of the Treaties of… Read more »

Ukraine’s ‘Electoral Maidan’: good news for democracy, bad news for the Kremlin

     

Political novice and comedian Volodymyr Zelensky won a sweeping victory [HT: Foreign Policy] in Ukraine’s elections what is seen as a protest vote against Ukraine’s establishment. He beat out incumbent President… Read more »

Supporting a United Ukraine

     

President Petro Poroshoenko and comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the two candidates in Ukraine’s runoff presidential election, face off in an official debate in Kiev on Friday (RFE/RL:CFR). The vote will be… Read more »