Category: Eurasia

How central Europe’s high hopes gave way to creeping authoritarianism

     

The central European states were the vanguards of communism’s collapse in the late 1980s, prompting a sense of inevitability about democracy’s benign coming, reinforced by the diverse figures who stepped… Read more »

Why Russia is ignoring first flirtation with liberalism

     

Russia’s February Revolution is one of history’s great “What if” moments, says the University of Queensland’s John Quiggin. If this revolution — which actually took place in early March 1917… Read more »

Electoral espionage is ‘political warfare’

     

Russia “is up to all sorts of no good,” British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said today, two days after announcing a plan to visit Moscow. “They are, I’m afraid, engaged… Read more »

Autocrats excel at anti-democratic propaganda

     

In contrast to inward-leaning democracies, which have an “End of History” sense of complacency, today’s autocrats are vibrant internationalists in the ideas sphere, notes Christopher Walker, vice president for studies… Read more »

Ideological aggression to be expected from ‘Putin: Operative in the Kremlin’

     

The Kremlin’s ‘active measures’ to undermine Western democracies mark a more aggressive step up from Russia’s earlier efforts to assert soft power, discussed here by Brookings analyst Fiona Hill. Meanwhile,… Read more »

EU leaders ‘idle’ in face of Russia’s information warfare?

     

European Union leaders remain idle in the face of Russia’s information warfare, which is increasing the Kremlin’s influence on public opinion in the West, reports suggest. “Russians know the art… Read more »

Azerbaijan: no progress on key reforms

     

The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) should suspend Azerbaijan’s membership for failing to carry out key reforms, a coalition of 21 groups including Human Rights Watch, Freedom House, PEN International,… Read more »

Russia’s information warfare: propaganda is not soft power

     

Russia’s use of information warfare to defeat its adversaries has a long history. However, whereas previously information warfare was an adjunct to Russian statecraft, today it is the Putin regime’s… Read more »