VoiCEE - Podcast from Central and Eastern Europe

In this episode, our host Joshua Coe speaks with journalist Mark Temnycky, who wrote for New Eastern Europe about the recent re-election of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. Nicknamed “Europe’s last dictator”, Lukashenko won another term in office last month with a proclaimed 87% of the vote. But election observers say there has not been a free and fair election in the country since he ca...

In this episode, our host Joshua Coe speaks with journalist Isabelle de Pommereau about her story "Humanitarian Warriors" written for Transitions magazine. In Kosovo, De Pommereau met Ukrainian women learning to clear the mines and unexploded ordnance littered across their country amid its ongoing war with Russia. More recently, De Pommereau was in Ukraine for the week of Donald Trump&#3...

In this episode, our host Joshua Coe  speaks with Szabolcs Panyi, an investigative journalist with Direkt36 and VSquare , about his recent cross-border investigation shedding light on how Hungary reportedly surveilled EU anti-fraud investigators probing the company of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s son-in-law. His findings indicate that Hungary’s foreign intelligence services even created an entire...

In this episode we're looking into the biggest topic of the past month, the president-elect of the United States, Donald J. Trump. Central and Eastern Europe have been a major focus of the current US administration, following Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and Trump has repeatedly said that he could quickly end this war. The region is also home to key US allies at Russia's doorstep, like Polan...

In this episode, Agnieszka Wądołowska , deputy editor-in-chief at Notes from Poland, speaks with the outlet's senior editor, Alicja Ptak , about her newly published report on how Poland's position as Europe's leading producer of lithium-ion batteries is being threatened by proposed new EU emissions rules. They discuss what has made Poland and the Central and Eastern Europe region so attractive to...

In this episode,  Anastasiia Herasymchuk, deputy editor-in-chief of UkraineWorld, interviews Jakub Kalensky, deputy director of the hybrid influence team at the European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats. They discuss how the Russian propaganda machine has attempted to influence recent regional and global events, such as elections to the European Parliament and the Ukraine Peace S...

In this episode of the VoiCEE podcast, Nicholas Watson , editor of Reporting Democracy, part of the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, discusses BIRN’s latest “Trends Report” with Claudia Ciobanu , BIRN’s Warsaw correspondent; Edit Inotai , its Budapest correspondent; Jules Eisenchteter , its Prague correspondent; and Gyula Csak , its editor for investigative international projects. Titled Li...

In this episode, Transitions' editor-in-chief Jeremy Druker interviews Ondřej Kundra , a leading Czech investigative journalist and deputy editor-in-chief of Respekt , about  his latest reporting on Belarus , the Czech Republic's special relationship with the country, and whether Central European countries should be doing more to help those facing repression. They also speak about Kundra&#...

In this episode, Kafkadesk contributor Adrien Beauduin interviews political scientist Jiří Koubek of Charles University in Prague about the roots of nationwide social discontent in the Czech Republic. They also speak about the successes and failures of the government; the reasons for the high popularity of ANO, the party of the former prime minister and billionaire Andrej Babiš; and the prospects...

In this episode, Adam Reichardt ,  Giorgi Beroshvili  and Soso Chachanidze of  New Eastern Europe magazine discuss the European Commission's recent recommendation to officially grant EU membership candidate status to Georgia as well as the EU's latest recommendations for the country. They assess the chances of Georgia catching up with countries like Moldova and Ukraine - which are already...

In this episode,  Agnieszka Wądołowska , deputy editor of Notes from Poland, speaks with  Stanley Bill , the founder and editor-at-large of Notes from Poland and professor in Polish Studies and director of the Polish Studies Programme at the University of Cambridge. They analyse the results of the parliamentary elections that took place on 15 October in Poland, discuss who were the biggest winners...

In this episode, Kafkadesk contributor  Adrien Beauduin  interviews political sociologist  Michal Vašečka , president of the Bratislava Policy Institute, about the Slovak parliamentary elections taking place on 30 September. They analyse the political turmoil of the last years; explain the success of nationalist and conservative parties; and sketch possible future coalitions, including the possibl...

In this episode, we discuss a story that won the 2022 Czech Journalism Award in the solution journalism category.

In this episode, Alicja Ptak, senior editor at Notes from Poland, speaks with Pavel Latushka , a former Belarusian minister and ambassador to Poland but now a leading opposition figure in exile, who was recently sentenced in absentia to 18 years in prison. They discuss the increasingly close cooperation between Belarus and Russia amid the war in Ukraine and its consequences for the region, includi...

In this episode - produced in partnership with Talk Eastern Europe, the official podcast of the New Eastern Europe magazine - Adam Reichardt, the editor-in-chief of NEE, speaks with Victoria Leukavets , a researcher at the Stockholm Centre for Eastern Europeans Studies and expert on Belarus and other Eastern Partnership countries. They look at recent developments around Belarus, the probability of...

In this episode of The VoiCEE podcast  Anna Gielewska , editor-in-chief of  Vsquare.org  – a cross-border network in Central Europe – speaks with  Szabolcs Panyi, a  leading investigative journalist at  Direkt36 ,  about what he and his colleagues have uncovered about Russia’s playbook for gaining influence in Central and Eastern Europe as well as the discrepancy in how effectively it works in Pol...

In this episode of The VoiCEE podcast, the team from Reporting Democracy discusses their just-released “Trends Report 2023: War in Ukraine Focuses Minds”, which identifies and examines the trends in the region that will play out over the rest of this year. The trends are:  State of Democracy: Belief Returns but New Social Contract Needed ;  The Future of Energy: Picking Up the Pace of th...

In this episode, Kafkadesk contributor Adrien Beauduin interviews political scientist Jiří Pehe, director of New York University Prague, about the recently concluded Czech presidential elections. They analyse the long campaign and its stormy finish; look back on departing president Miloš Zeman's legacy; and try to predict how his successor, former NATO general Petr Pavel, will govern, especially w...

In this episode of  The VoiCEE  podcast,  Agnieszka Wądołowska , deputy editor of Notes from Poland, speaks with  Andrea Pető , professor in the department of Gender Studies at Central European University, Vienna, and a doctor of science of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. They discuss support among the Polish public for allowing access to abortion up to the 12th week of preg...

In this episode of The VoiCEE podcast, Agnieszka Wądołowska, deputy editor of Notes from Poland, speaks with Maciej Duszyczk, a professor at the University of Warsaw's Centre of Migration Research. They discuss the situation of Ukrainian refugees in Poland and how it has changed in the last eight months - how some have found their place on the job market and in the education system and h...

In this episode of the VoiCEE podcast, Marek Józefiak, media and policy officer for Greenpeace Poland, discusses with BIRN's Nicholas Watson the fate of the European Green Deal in the context of the war in Ukraine. At its most basic, the war highlights how countries that pursue net-zero strategies will have to continually contend with "greenwalls" - energy transition deterrents created by crises o...

In this episode, Volodymyr Yermolenko - a Ukrainian philosopher and journalist, and chief editor of UkraineWorld.org - and Tetyana Ogarkova - a Ukrainian scholar and journalist in charge of international outreach at the Ukraine Crisis Media Centre - analyse the key features of Ukrainian civic and political identity. They discuss the long history of fighting against tyranny, a culture of self-organ...

In this episode of The VoiCEE podcast, Jeremy Druker, executive director and editor-in-chief of Transitions, speaks with Marius Dragomir, director of the Center for Media, Data, & Society. They discuss the dire state of media independence in the region, but also some bright spots of hope and recommendations on how to turn things around.

In this episode, Reporting Democracy editor and host Nicholas Watson discusses the issue surrounding the deterioration of the rule of law in the region, the condition of which the European Union is becoming increasingly worried, especially in Poland and Hungary. The rule of law is mentioned twice in the preamble to the Treaty on European Union. In Article 2, it stipulates that: “The Union is found...

In this episode, Kafkadesk writer and host Karolína Boháčová will be discussing the trend of electoral coalitions in Central Europe and analyse whether they can prove a successful strategy against Central European strongmen and political heavyweights across the CEE region. In the first half of this episode, we will look at the success story of the Czech electoral coalition in late 2021 and study t...