Talk Eastern Europe

*** Support Talk Eastern Europe. Become a Patron at www.patreon.com/TalkEasternEurope This episode brings us back to Estonia with an interview with Kristina Kallas, a political scientist and the leader of Eesti 200 liberal political party. Ahead of the autumn local elections, political divisions are sharp in this northern Baltic state. However Kallas hopes her vision for a renewed political agenda...

*** Support Talk Eastern Europe. Become a Patron at www.patreon.com/TalkEasternEurope In this special episode of Talk Eastern Europe, Maciek sits down with Dmytro Khutkyy an expert on digital democracy and open governance. They discuss how different countries approach digital democracy, what are some advantages and also pitfalls of digitizing our public sector. The main context for the conversatio...

*** Support Talk Eastern Europe. Become a Patron at www.patreon.com/TalkEasternEurope In this episode, we invite Romain Lequiniou from the French think tank “Euro Créative” and Lidia Gibadło from the Polish Institute of International Affairs (PISM) to discuss the approaches of two of the most important players in Western Europe - Germany and France - towards the region of Eastern Europe. We discus...

*** Support Talk Eastern Europe. Become a Patron at www.patreon.com/TalkEasternEurope In this episode we welcome back Agnieszka Legucka, a Polish analyst and expert on Russia. During Maciek’s interview with Agnieszka, the podcast discusses the security situation in the region, the Kremlin’s motives for massing troops around Ukraine and some of the internal factors which may also be driving the Kre...

*** Support Talk Eastern Europe. Become a Patron at www.patreon.com/TalkEasternEurope This episode of Talk Eastern Europe heads back to the Southern Caucasus following the serious clashes between Azerbaijan and Armenia last year. The fighting came to an end with a Russian-negotiated peace agreement, providing Azerbaijan with some territorial gains and putting Russian peacekeeping troops on the gro...

*** Support this podcast! Become a Patron here: www.patreon.com/talkeasterneurope This episode of Talk Eastern Europe takes a look at the role of history and memory of the Holocaust and the Second World War which still haunts so many in this region and beyond. The context for the episode is the book titled Memory Monster written by Israeli author Yishai Sarid, which was recently published in Polis...

*** Support this podcast! Become a Patron here: www.patreon.com/talkeasterneurope In this special episode of Talk Eastern Europe, Adam and Maciek sit down with Linas Linkevičius, former Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Lithuania. During the discussion, Linkevičius reflects on his time as foreign minister, Europe’s relations with Russia, the role of the Baltic states in the region, an...

*** Support this podcast! Become a Patron here: www.patreon.com/talkeasterneurope In this episode of Talk Eastern Europe we return back to Belarus and the society which continues to face severe repressions by the regime. In this episode, Maciek has a conversation with Alexandr Chavoski from the Belarusian Culture Solidarity Foundation, an NGO based in Estonia. They discuss a unique strategy by thi...

*** Support this podcast! Become a Patron here: www.patreon.com/talkeasterneurope This episode of Talk Eastern Europe returns to the Southern Caucasus with a look at the political situation in Georgia. Immediately following the parliamentary elections last October, the united opposition failed to recognize the outcomes of the elections as free and fair and refused to take their seats in the parlia...

*** Support this podcast! Become a Patron here: www.patreon.com/talkeasterneurope This episode of Talk Eastern Europe features a discussion with Reinhard Krumm, the founder and director of the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung’s Regional Office for Cooperation and Peace in Europe, he was previously a journalist who spent a lot of time in Russia and the post-Soviet space; and was the Moscow correspondent fo...

*** Support this podcast! Become a Patron here: www.patreon.com/talkeasterneurope In December 2020, Maia Sandu became the new president of Moldova. Her main focus so far has been a strong foreign policy, meeting with neighbours and western partners. Domestically, the political situation gives the impression of looming chaos. Her main aim is to force new parliamentary elections, while her opponents...

*** Support this podcast! Become a Patron here: www.patreon.com/talkeasterneurope On October 27th, 2020, Ukraine’s Constitutional Court made a controversial decision undoing one of the most important reforms put into place since 2014. This decision reverse certain procedures aimed at reducing corruption among judges and created greater politicization of the judiciary. In this episode of Talk Easte...

*** Support this podcast! Become a Patron here: www.patreon.com/talkeasterneurope Last weekend, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny returned to Russia after recovering from being poisoned. He was immediately arrested upon arrival, sparking tens of thousands of Russians to take to the streets, with hundreds being arrested and detained. Talk Eastern Europe is back in 2021 with an all new episod...

>>> Support the podcast, become a patron: www.patreon.com/TalkEasternEurope On November 17 2020, Bulgaria officially vetoed the European Union’s accession talks with North Macedonia. Officially, the dispute is over unresolved historical and language issues. Despite some progress in its Euro-Atlantic aspirations – which includes joining NATO in June 2020 – there are now many questions as to what ne...

This discussion was originally live streamed on December 3rd 2020. During this discussion, we caught up with some of the authors from the latest issue of New Eastern Europe and asked them for their take on European values in these difficult times. The discussion includes: Maxim Rust, PhD, New Eastern Europe Kinga Anna Gajda, PhD, Institute of European Studies, Jagiellonian University (Krakow) Volo...

>>> Support the podcast, become a patron: www.patreon.com/TalkEasternEurope On November 15, Maia Sandu won the second round of the presidential elections with 57.75% of the vote and she became the first female president in the history of Moldova. In the second round she defeated the incumbent president, Igor Dodon, who in the last year seemed to have all the cards in hand to maintain his rule for...

Support the podcast! Become a Patron: www.patreon.com/talkeasterneurope In this episode, Talk Eastern Europe heads back to the Baltic states, taking a look at Lithuania, which just finished their parliamentary elections. In the episode Maciek and Adam catch up with Monika Bičkauskaitė from the Warsaw office of the German Marshall Fund. They discuss with her the outcomes of the election, reasoning...

This special online discussion which took place on October 27 2020 is dedicated to looking at the situation in Belarus and how the countries of the Weimar Triangle can and should respond. We will gather insight on the current situation in Belarus and discuss how France, Germany and Poland are responding and how can they better coordinate together for a better joint and European policy. The panel f...

** Support this podcast. Become a Patron at www.patreon.com/TalkEasternEurope In this special episode of Talk Eastern Europe, Adam sits down with Peter Pomerantsev, expert on disinformation and author of the recent book: “This is not Propaganda. Adventures in the war against Reality”. They discuss the recent report looking at roots of polarization in Ukraine, his current assessment of disinformati...

** Support Talk Eastern Europe. Become a Patron at www.patreon.com/TalkEasternEurope In this episode, which is the third part in our special mini-series on Romanian foreign policy in the region, Maciek asks Oktawian Milewski to provide a deeper look at Romanian-Russian relations. They cover such topics as: historical factors in current relations; Romania’s role as a regional player; the Eastern Pa...

** Support Talk Eastern Europe. Become a Patron at www.patreon.com/TalkEasternEurope This episode of Talk Eastern Europe discusses the delicate relationship between two regional powers with ambitions for their neighbourhoods: Russia and Turkey. The two countries, which faced a serious crisis in 2015 after a Russian jet was shot down in Turkish airspace. Since then, both countries have found a comm...

*** Support Talk Eastern Europe. Become a Patron at www.patreon.com/TalkEasternEurope On September 27th, clashes broke out between Azerbaijani and Armenian forces in the conflict region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The intensity of the clashes quickly escalated becoming the largest escalation since the cease-fire in 1994 (larger than the so-called 4-days War in 2016). Both sides quickly announced partial...

Support Talk Eastern Europe. Become a Patron: www.patreon.com/talkeasterneurope Since 2014, the number of Ukrainians coming to Poland, temporarily or permanently, has grown exponentially. Some estimates believe that there are between one to two million Ukrainian migrants currently in Poland. This episode of Talk Eastern Europe looks at why Ukrainians are coming to Poland, how their migration has a...

Support this podcast. Become a patron (even just $2 a month will help us!) www.patreon.com/talkeasterneurope On October 31st, Georgians will go to the polls in the next parliamentary elections. These elections will be a huge test to the current ruling party, the Georgian Dream, following new election reforms and the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic fallout in the background. How will other facto...

Originally live streamed on 08 September 2020 This is the fourth and final online debate in the framework of the project titled “Ost/Wschód: German-Polish Debates on the East”. This time, we are discussing the topic of the growing convergences and divergences of Russian-Chinese cooperation in the post-Soviet Space. The debate features: - Germany: Helena Legarda from the Mercator Institute for Chin...