New Eastern Europe

Alaksandar Klacko recalls the first days of Russia’s full-scale invasion without any romanticism. For him, the war began the moment he realized that missiles striking Ukrainian cities were being launched from the territory of his own country. Soon afterward, he joined the Belarusian volunteers of the Kalinouski Regiment fighting on Ukraine’s side. He was later wounded and now...

When one thinks of minority groups in Estonia, Russian speakers are often the first, and only, group that comes to mind. Thanks to Estonia’s history, government policies, and geopolitics, this subset of the population often generates

As much of the world’s attention was focused on the aftermath of the Hungarian election, a quiet revolution had taken place in Bulgaria. Rumen Radev, Bulgaria’s former president and a former air force general, was elected prime minister with a simple majority. This ended a five-year-long period of continuous political crisis, during which the country had eight elections and s...

After reporting from the frontlines stretching from southern Donetsk Oblast through Sloviansk to the Kharkiv region—where we met several Ukrainian brigades and spoke with dozens of soldiers—we returned to Kyiv at a moment of mounting political tension. The capital had just witnessed protests against the dismissal of Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, demonstrations reminiscen...

On February 23th 2025, Lyalya Kuzmenko, a Ukrainian Roma, was awake before dawn, getting ready for her shift at the market, when a blast wave blew in through the window above her kitchen table and scattered glass across the floor. She grabbed her dogs and ran into the street. When an official came to record the damage, he glanced at her papers and told her not to bother filin...