Category: Central/Eastern Europe

Conservative civil society pushing back against Western liberal norms

     

The rapid rise of Brazil’s new far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro may have surprised some observers but it did not come out of thin air. His success follows years of support… Read more »

Bellingcat – ‘a thorn in the Kremlin’s side’

     

The investigative website Bellingcat has found itself at the heart of some of the Kremlin’s touchiest affairs over the last few years—starting with the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern… Read more »

Defending Digital Democracy via Election Cybersecurity Scorecard

     

More than 120 state and local election officials, communications directors, IT managers, and secretaries of state ran drills simulating security catastrophes that could happen on the worst Election Day imaginable,… Read more »

Putin’s Russia: emergence of democratic alternative an unlikely scenario?

     

Authoritarian rule is not imposed on Russians from above but is solicited from below by the people themselves, claims Sergey Karaganov, a former Putin advisor and one of Russia’s leading… Read more »

Why illiberalism is on the rise

     

The reasons for the failure of democracy to take hold in Russia and for its current backsliding in Central Europe are complex, but one important and often neglected factor is… Read more »

Hacks, leaks & disruptions: Russia – from digital outlier to cyberpower

     

A set of measures to defend digital democracies against disinformation campaigns, hackers and cyberattacks is urgently required, according to Hacks, leaks and disruptions: Russian cyber strategies, a new report from… Read more »

Russia retards democratic progress on freedom’s frontlines

     

The outgoing deputy head of the monitoring mission to Ukraine of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe says newly compiled statistics prove that lack of political will is… Read more »

Elections in MENA and the Western Balkans: what impact?

     

The Transatlantic Leadership Network (TLN) is a new think-and-do tank organized and registered as a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization in Washington, D.C. The network will engage international scholars, government officials, parliamentarians,… Read more »

Erasing the ‘grey zone’ on the frontlines of freedom

     

The countries of Georgia, the Republic of Moldova, and Ukraine stand at a crossroads, the Atlantic Council notes. Perched between Russia and the West, they have chosen a path of… Read more »